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In July 2014, the UN Open Working Group on Sustainable Development proposed a universal set of post-2015 goals and targets to succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The draft consists of 17 ambitious goals for social, economic and enviro...

The recently published F&BKP report on food wastage shows that a significant decline in food wastage will not automatically improve food security. There may be a positive impact on resource efficiency and general food availability in the...

Since their adoption in 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have been the most successful global anti-poverty push in history. They have helped in achieving tremendous progress, including halving extreme poverty, improving the lives of 2...

Impact sourcing is a promising means to enhance employment and training opportunities for the poor and underprivileged.

Inequality is the result of political choices. It is now a growing worldwide problem that causes social problems, financial instability and hinders economic growth. These were some of the key messages from The Broker’s panel at the recent Developm...

Progress in global poverty reduction has not only led to more ambitious goals, but also to new demands for better data.

Although the MDGs have certainly facilitated progress in Africa's development, sustaining this progress comes with national, regional and global challenges.

Both multinationals and social entrepreneurs develop products and services for and with the base of the pyramid (BoP) to serve the demands of these poor communities. Many see social entrepreneurs as the solution to implementing more effective and...

If we want the new global development agenda to be manageable, it is perhaps better to design a small set of end goals similar to the original MDGs, instead of a new wish list.

In the last week of September, world leaders gathered in New York for the general debate marking the opening of the 68th UN General Assembly (GA). This was an important moment for the post-2015 process, as several events were organized on the glob...

EU Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs outlines his perspective on the post-2015 agenda.

Although the MDGs are arguably the most politically important pact ever made for international development, they harbor several lessons for their successor framework.

The complex relationship between insecurity issues and development can be clarified by including 'development disruptor' goals in the post-2015 framework.

Africa is gaining increasing global economic importance, but it has to address logistical and policy impediments to fully benefit from it.

Only through focusing on equity can poverty reduction and a sustainable environment be achieved in the post-2015 development framework.

Only collective action can strengthen the inclusive business ecosystem and reach impact.

Food price hikes, natural disasters, environmental degradation, and financial crises share at least two things in common: They’re on the rise, and they unequally burden the poor. 

Economic policy should focus on poverty reduction rather than on growth and should start in rural areas. First of two blog posts by David Woodward.

Inequality of opportunity provides a helpful way of framing the debate, particularly so as it shows the agreement that circumstances should not prohibit the fulfillment of talent. For children, early inequalities in learning or nutrition have seri...

The debate on a post-2015 inequality target is missing a fundamental point: what inequality would we like to eliminate?

Norway’s recent international cooperation white paper, Sharing for Prosperity, seems stubbornly non-conformist. For it recommits Norway to some fundamental, if today unfashionable, purposes: for low-income lands, pursuit of growth-with-r...

For a national policy maker it is possible to think about raising the income levels of the bottom 10% or 20% toward the middle of the distribution. The poorest can be brought nearer the poverty line through measures like cash transfers.

Assuming a joint approach would unleash agricultural potential and strengthen the market, Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) have dominated global food security strategies. The debate highlights several strategies, for example, focusing on the loc...

Given the over-sensitivity of the Gini to the middle of the distribution, and the insensitivity of the Palma, policymakers could consider a choice between the two: which aspect of the distribution are you more concerned with?

Sharing Dutch agricultural expertise in lcoal partnerships can positively contribute to the eradication of rural poverty. 

On why the post-2015 agenda should include a goal to limit the negative characteristics of inequality and how indicators of income concentration are better suited for this. One proposal that could be used is the Palma index.

The last few months have been a busy time for inequality. And over the last few days the poor thing got busier still. Inequality is now dancing on two stages. It must be really quite dizzy.

Northern donors are more and more working on technical fixes to solve problems of malnutrition mainly in close co-operation with the food industry. Though this will not solve the causes that lead to malnutrition.

In the international post-2015 discussion, inequality remains a sensitive issue. However, it should be addressed as a political issue that requires strong political will to tackle it.

There is chance for us to overcome the challenge of water security if we really live our lives on the basis of respect for diversity, all people and for the Earth.

The EU biofuels policy has missed it change to mitigate global inequality. Instead, it has negative impacts on food security, poverty eradication and the climate.

UNESCO can play a vital role in guaranteeing a focus on sustainability and interrelated water challenges in the formulation of the post-2015 development agenda. 

The role of small scale capture fisheries in rural livelihood, trade and food security remains critically unrecognized in development and poverty reduction approaches.

The key areas to prioritize in the UN’s Post-2015 development agenda will soon be determined in a worldwide consultation process coordinated by the UN. Feeding into this process, The Broker brings together international experts to pool their knowl...

The MDGs tend to disregard processes of change and the transformative power of that change. However, it is precisely that transformative power that is at the core of development issues, the primary goal of most development cooperation and the diff...

There is an inevitable trade-off between global growth and climate change. Unless there is a direct causal link from faster economic growth to the development of carbon-reducing technologies, and this is strong enough to reduce the carbon intensit...

In the on-going discussion on inequality, “new” seems to be the magic word. Unfortunately we still have the old problem, being that 1,3 billion people have to live on less than a dollar a day.

This consultation on food security should shed light on who are the key and new actors in the global food security debate and how can they be better included? Does existing knowledge exchange increase innovative capacity?  

Inequality is firmly back on the policy agenda in many parts of the world. Many believe it should have a prominent position on the post-2015 agenda. I disagree. Please let me explain why.

I recently chaired a forum that discussed whether a new paradigm has emerged in the field of development cooperation, and if so, what does it consist of? A great deal of time at these kinds of debates is spent exploring definitions and their usefu...

Sir Richard Jolly discusses why the reduction of inequality is crucial for economic growth and greater prosperity

Few topics in the broad domain of 'development' are as sexy as microfinance. Rock stars, royalty, the Nobel prize committee – almost everyone seems to have embraced it. Public relations for microfinance has been awesome.

Budget support is a relatively new, yet already widely criticized, phenomenon. However, despite a lack of evidence of its impact on poverty reduction, it is too early to write it off. Budget support is likely to have a significant long-term impact...

China’s explosive economic growth has made it a more prominent player in global development. This brings with it a host of new, multilateral responsibilities. The question is still open as to how China will respond to its new status.

In Africa, economic growth and GDP are still of the utmost importance and are a necessary condition for real wellbeing, argues Dirk Bol. 

New development models and even economic theories are redundant, argues Wieck Wildeboer: "As a donor community, we may practice some modesty". 

Some weeks ago the European Commission published its initial views on the strategy towards the Rio+20 Summit. The communication has to fuel dialogues ahead of a final EU Rio+20 Strategy later this year. Although the communication, titled 'Rio+20:...

Today, less than one year ahead of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, 13 eminent international experts on sustainable development governance from seven countries released a joint statement entitled: 'Now is the Time! Why Rio+20 must succeed'.The joint state...

Editor Evert-jan Quak comments and reflects on new research, publications, blog posts, conferences and current affairs in the field of food security. 

The global 'It's Down 2 Earth' conference on agriculture, food security and climate change was held in The Hague, the Netherlands, from 31 October to 5 November 2010. The Broker hosted an online discussion blog where participants agreed that agric...

960 million or 72% of the world's poor live in middle income countries

The Millennium Development Goals claim our attention as today’s pro-poor aid agenda. Yet going by who gets what and from whom, the world’s real agenda looks distinctly pro-rich.The MDGs have been a singular success as a vehicle for many in the aid...

The end of the first day of the MDG-fest at the UN General Assembly and everyone seems to be promising more and better partnerships: between the public, private and civil sectors; between international agencies (the IMF and ILO had a love-in in Os...

Possibly one of the greatest steps towards the advancement of women’s rights over the last decade has been the expansion of primary education. But on its own, this is not adequate to ensure gender equality or empower women. The position of gender...

This UN summit is extremely important, even for the billion and a half extremely poor people in the world. Since I am known for being very critical of the poverty reduction policies, this statement may surprise. Let me explain what I mean.Poverty...

There are only five years left to deliver the targets set by the Millennium Development Goals for poverty, education, gender, health and the environment. The MDGs have had success so far: generating global consensus, supporting advocacy, mobilizin...

The Millenium Development Goal (MDG) summit in New York this week promises to look at what can be done to meet the approaching deadline of 2015

Participants of the Third International Conference on Eco-Efficiency, held in Egmond aan de Zee, The Netherlands, June 9-11, 2010, discussed how to ensure that 8 billion people in developed and (former) developing countries can have a good life by...

The Challenge according to Gjalt Huppes as he explained it in the opening session of the Confernce today:1. We want the good life for 8 billion people by 20502. Environmental challenge: by 2050 growth of eco-efficiency with factor 2-5 (means: envi...

Could de-growth reduce poverty and avoid climate change? A scientific study coordinated by researchers of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona has recently argued that “The solution both t...

Complexity approaches have a lot to offer the aid business, if it is not already too late. We asked Nils Boesen to comment on the blog postings from a recent conference.

Global value chains offer many opportunities for rural entrepreneurs in developing countries to become competitive actors in world markets. But unless local power relations are taken into account, value chain development is unlikely to reduce pove...

The MDGs have come to play an important symbolic and substantive role in current development debates and strategy. They are important symbolically because they represent, at one level, an unprecedented international moral consensus that reducing a...

Marieke Hounjet is reporting live from the Brussels Forum for The BrokerIn his welcoming word Andy Sumner states that 2015 ‘is a line in the sand’ and that therefore it is good idea to have a discussion on the future of the Millennium Development...

I finished my blog yesterday by highlighting the need for a new development paradigm. This new paradigm may take up to five years to emerge and, from past experience of paradigm shifts, it will draw together ideas from existing theory and practice...

  In his famous 1955 article in which he hypothesized that national income inequality would increase in the early stages of economic development and subsequently decline as average per capita incomes rose, Simon Kuznets warned that poli...

I finished my blog posting yesterday with a promise to say something about the 'what next?' question. Well, I’m always thinking about a book academics generally can’t stand but I love – that’s Gladwell’s Tipping point (Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to...

Andy Sumner’s article ‘Beyond 2015’ captures well both the strengths and the shortcomings of the current MDG framework. My organization, Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative, has participated in several events exploring this topi...

The MDGs are remarkable events in this 21 century in the sense that the goals have led to increased awareness, coherence and global mobilisation of resources for poverty reduction. The MDGs have also shown that poverty is not a national or regiona...

I welcome Andy Sumner’s contribution on the future of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). While there has been much debate around achieving the MDGs, and tracking progress of countries and regions, little has been said about the future of the...

The eight MDGs could simply be summarized as a desire to reduce poverty (MDG 1) through addressing its various dimensions such as hunger, malnutrition, poor health (including addressing HIV/AIDS, malaria, and poor maternal health), lack of basic e...

There are less than 7 years to go before 2015. Ever since the MDG journey took off at the turn of the 20th century, their outcomes have been monitored and assessed. The interactive maps of the MDG Atlas provide some graphic insights. We need not b...

In the late 1990s, the so-called sector-wide approach (SWAp) became a fashionable new method for handling development aid. It was part of an international quest for more efficient and effective aid delivery that would truly contribute to poverty r...

This second article in a series looking at development in European countries focuses on Ireland, which is becoming a major and much-lauded player in world development. Yet there are doubts within the domestic aid community about the direction of p...

The broker asked Stephan Klasen to reflect on the following three questions concerning Europe's role in international development.