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Skills Development of Early Career Researchers Involved in Disability-Inclusive Arts and Humanities Research
No full textThis report details a skills development process for early career researchers (ECRs) associated with ten Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded research networks that focus on disability-inclusive development. The process involved both the formation of an ECR peer support group and a face-to-face workshop.For the peer support group, the principal investigators (PIs) from the networks were asked to nominate associated ECRs to participate. The definition of an ECR was kept broad, with anyone who self-defines as an ECR being welcome to join. Members were not expected to have a postgraduate degree but either be working in a research position or have strong aspirations to do so in the near future. The group attracted 22 members from 12 countries. Online meetings were held every month over a period of eight months in 2023 and 2024. These meetings involved discussions, presentations, and networking opportunities for the ECRs.A face-to-face workshop was the next phase of the skills development work. The PIs were asked to select ECRs to attend a face-to-face skills development workshop. Various skills domains for development were identified, including collegiality, mentoring, publishing research, and collaboration. The ECRs also expressed a desire to learn more about effective approaches to enhance public engagement with research, techniques for understanding and integrating policy implications into research, and about innovative ways to disseminate research to diverse audiences.The workshop was delivered in partnership with Stellenbosch University, South Africa, in October 2024, with seven ECRs participating. This report provides a detailed account of the entire ECR skills development process, including reflections from participants on their experiences of being involved.</p
Taxer les riches dans les pays à faible revenu : Pourquoi est-ce important et comment le faire ?
No full textDe nos jours, l’augmentation des tensions internationales, la montée en flèche des niveaux d’endettement ou le changement climatique sont des crises mondiales qui touchent particulièrement les pays à faible revenu (PFR).1 Qu’elles soient issues de sources nationales ou de l’aide internationale, les finances des PFR n’augmentent pas suffisamment pour répondre à leurs besoins. Leurs exigences en matière de dépenses sont plus élevées que jamais ; l’amélioration des services, l’extension de la protection sociale ou encore le soutien à l’investissement alourdissent la facture. Dans ce contexte, le présent rapport sur les politiques publiques indique qu’un des outils à la disposition des gouvernements des PFR est particulièrement sous-utilisé : taxer plus efficacement les riches.La dernière version du bulletin politique comprend une version corrigée de la figure 2.</p
Food Safety Certification in Urban Food Markets: the Willingness to Pay for Safer Meat in Peru
No full textThis paper estimates consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for meat certified to be safe for human consumption in Peru Citizens in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are increasingly concerned about the safety of food they consume. Across LMICs, urban markets remain the most important source of fresh and nutritious produce and therefore policy makers need to ensure food safety in urban markets. Much focus has been put on providing producers and supply chain actors with economic incentives to improve food safety. However, such effort has had limited effect without addressing the overall market and food safety governance. In this paper, based on an innovative policy experience from Peru, we explore if and how much consumers are willing to pay for meat sold at market stalls that are certified to provide safe meat. Peru has employed a series of economic packages to incentivise market vendors to improve their practices, and in turn increase their revenue. Our analysis based on a consumer survey across three cities in Peru reveal that consumers are willing to pay 7.1%, 5.8%and 5.3% of the average retail prices of chicken, pork and beef, respectively. This amounts to an average of about 216USD/month of extra revenue for vendors.</p
Understanding the Complex Knowledge Economy Toward Antimicrobial Stewardship in West Bengal, India
No full textKnowledge dissemination and awareness raising is a common strategy for fostering antimicrobial stewardship and tackling antimicrobial resistance (AMR). However, empirical evidence suggests that the dissemination of technical/biomedical information about AMR, alone, is insufficient to improve antibiotic use in resource-poor settings. This is because antibiotic users’ decisions are based not only on biomedical knowledge but also on social and clinical information that is specific to local healthcare realities, and healthcare providers’ clinical knowledge and judgement. In this article, we propose a framework that identifies knowledge critical to deciding a course of antibiotic treatment for possible infection in resource-poor settings, and how to improve the knowledge flow to improve antibiotic use. Specifically, we focus on understanding three domains of knowledge that guide antibiotic users’ decisions: 1) scientific evidence, and evidence-based treatment guidelines; 2) local knowledge of infection patterns and risks, and the susceptibility of organisms causing infection to different antibiotics; and 3) personal and social characteristics of the patient. Drawing from the theory of information asymmetry and empirical data from West Bengal, India, we show that all three domains of knowledge demonstrated degrees of asymmetry, and community-level practitioners’ knowledge was not effectively taken into account in clinical guidance. We conclude that interventions targeting AMR need to reflect all three knowledge domains to be effective in clinical settings.</p
K4DD Mpox Health Evidence Summary No 12
No full textBi-weekly Mpox Health Evidence Summaries aim to signpost FCDO and others to the latest relevant evidence on Mpox.</p
Food Security and the Environment [Editorial]
No full textThere is an obvious connection between poor people's food security and the preservation of the environment in which they live. Yet there is little consensus about the nature of this relationship. Unless their interactions are better understood, there is a danger that policies for environmental protection – in an increasingly environmentally-concerned aid climate – will unknowingly compromise food security. An obvious illustration is the promotion of goats in marginal areas as an insurance against harvest failure; a policy which enhances food security but may have disastrous environmental consequences. This issue of the IDS Bulletin arises from a new research initiative at IDS, linking the work of the Environment Programme and the Food Security Unit. A number of workshops held at IDS considered whether two such diverse and extensive fields of inquiry could usefully be linked and, if so, what kinds of approaches would be most appropriate. The articles are the result of these workshops. Taken together with a Discussion Paper setting out the issues and Development Bibliography reviewing relevant literature, they form a starting point for more focused research on particular conflicts and complementarities between the pursuit of food security and environmental goals.</p
Changing Perspectives on Forests: Science/Policy Processes in Wider Society
No full textThis IDS Bulletin attempts to link two sets of pressing contemporary concerns. On the one hand, it addresses changing relationships between science, policy and society in the context of internationalisation and public challenges to formal expertise; concerns currently under hot debate in European settings as much as in developing countries. On the other hand, it engages with issues around rural landscape and livelihoods in low‑income countries, particularly in West Africa and the Caribbean. Tropical forests provide a linking focus, strongly implicated as they are both in local livelihoods and struggles for resource control, and in scientific and policy debates extending from local settings to highly charged global arenas – not least in the lead-up to the ‘Rio Plus 10’ Conference on Environment and Development in Johannesburg, 2002. The IDS Bulletin reviews important advances in the science of forest dynamics, which in turn suggest ways that forest policies could become more ‘pro-poor’. At the same time, it analyses the science/policy processes and power/knowledge relations, which must be addressed if such changes are to come about. We hope that this IDS Bulletin issue will be of interest not only to researchers, policymakers and practitioners working in the forestry, environment and development fields, but also to those interested in science and policy more broadly, illustrating how issues often examined in ‘Northern’, hi-tech industrial settings, could work out in very different contexts in the ‘South’.</p
K4DD Mpox Health Evidence Summary No 9
No full textBi-weekly Mpox Health Evidence Summaries aim to signpost FCDO and others to the latest relevant evidence on Mpox.</p
Unpacking Tax Relations in Contexts of Fragility: A Case Study of Somalia
No full textThis paper examines fiscal relations in contexts of fragility. It focuses on the tax relationship between the post-transitional Somali government and advanced businesses in the telecommunications sector, which emerged during the period of state collapse. The paper poses two specific questions. It asks why such dominant economic players would pay taxes to a state that, per standard tax theory, had limited authority, legitimacy, and capacity to deliver ‘reciprocal returns’ or collective goods and services. Secondly, for a sector that had emerged in the context of statelessness, it interrogates whether some level of state capacity had become ‘pivotal for business’? In doing so, the paper assesses the impact of fiscal relations on broader state-building dynamics.In interrogating these questions, the paper employs a qualitative process tracing approach and draws on recent anthropological research on fiscal exchanges and emerging insights from the fragile state experience. The paper finds that as the sector transformed, becoming more decentralised, technologically advanced and internationalised, there were specific ‘returns’ that the sector required from a formal state, which underlaid the sector’s tax motivations. However, while the Telecom sector demonstrated increasing support for the state project and was willing to make specific tax contributions – regulatory fees for licences and sales taxes – it resisted corporate taxes. Such fiscal dynamics demonstrated that the sector’s level of investment in the state project was tentative. As such, there was still some way to go before the formal state institutions were seen as critical for business.</p
Case Studies on Progressive Taxation in Low-Income Countries
No full textThis report presents five case studies looking at examples of how various low-income countries have attempted to increase the progressivity of their tax systems and improve the compliance of wealthier taxpayers. In most cases, political contestation rather than technical capacity is the principal barrier to change.</p