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Abstract. Citizen-science (CS) programs provide a cost-effective way to collect monitoring data over large temporal and spatial scales. Despite the recent prol

Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA) aims to build the resilience of vulnerable populations in climate change hotspots by building new knowledge and capacities to support better informed policy and practice. The program connects more than 450 researchers and practitioners from over 40 organizations. Initially, CARIAA was not directive in terms of the specific topics or forms of synthesis. This approach allowed new ideas to emerge from interactions between...

There are increasing criticisms of dominant models for scaling up health systems in developing countries and a recognition that approaches are needed that better take into account the complexity of health interventions. Since Reform and Opening in the late 1970s, Chinese government has managed complex, rapid and intersecting reforms across many policy areas. As with reforms in other policy areas, reform of the health system has been through a process of trial and error. There is increasing...

An innovation experiment in Indonesia yields insights on how international development organizations can effectively foster innovation within the communities they aim to help.

There is a growing recognition that programs that seek to change people’s lives are intervening in complex systems, which puts a particular set of requirements on program monitoring and evaluation. Developing complexity-aware program monitoring and evaluation systems within existing organizations is difficult because they challenge traditional orthodoxy. Little has been written about the practical experience of doing so. This article describes the development of a complexity-aware evaluation...

We explain why international development organizations have had so little success building and reforming public sector institutions in developing countries. They often fail despite their apparently strong commitment to achieving measurable results and extraordinary amounts of time, money, and effort. We demonstrate that, when donors and lenders make access to financing contingent upon achievement of performance targets, recipient countries tend to choose easy and shallow institutional...

Resolving uncertainties in managed social-ecological systems requires adaptive experimentation at whole-ecosystem levels. However, whether participatory adaptive management fosters ecological understanding among stakeholders beyond the sphere of science is unknown. We experimentally involved members of German angling clubs (n = 181 in workshops, n = 2483 in total) engaged in self-governance of freshwater fisheries resources in a large-scale ecological experiment of active adaptive management...

(2017). Critical agency and development: applying Freire and Sen to ICT4D in Zambia and Brazil. Information Technology for Development. Ahead of Print. doi: 10.1080/02681102.2017.1328656

Van Deth’s comprehensive ‘conceptual map of political participation’ has reinstated a lively debate about the concept of political participation, and provides some compelling solutions to it. However, an important question that has been raised is whether van Deth’s map actually achieves its main goal of unambiguously identifying and classifying emerging, complex types of participation, like online political activism – or lifestyle politics. To contribute to this debate, this article aims to...

Improving outcomes at scale requires a paradigm shift in how we work.

Many rural poor and marginalized people strive to make a living in social-ecological systems that are characterized by multiple and often inequitable interactions across agents, scale and space. Uncertainty and inequality in such systems require research and development interventions to be adaptive, support learning and to engage with underlying drivers of poverty. Such complexity-aware approaches to planning, monitoring and evaluating development interventions are gaining strength, yet,...

An International Species Management Plan for the Svalbard population of the pink-footed goose was adopted under the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds in 2012, the first case of adaptive management of a migratory waterbird population in Europe. An international working group (including statutory agencies, NGO representatives and experts) agreed on objectives and actions to maintain the population in favourable conservation status, while accounting for...

Development is going digital and INGOs like Oxfam have a vital convening role to play. This paper draws on ICT for Development in Oxfam’s programmes in the Horn, East and Central Africa to consider what this role is.  In order to realise the opportunities

In fields like climate and development, where the challenges being addressed can be described as “wicked”, learning is key to successful programming. Useful practical and theoretical work is being undertaken to better understand the role of reflexive learning in bringing together different knowledge to address complex problems like climate change. Through a review of practical cases and learning theories commonly used in the areas of resilience, climate change adaptation and environmental...

In this article we seek to revisit what the term ‘technopolitical’ means for democratic politics in our age. We begin by tracing how the term was used and then transformed through various and conflicting adaptations of ICTs (Information and

The primary goals of environmental monitoring are to indicate whether unexpected changes related to development are occurring in the physical, chemical, and biological attributes of ecosystems and to inform meaningful management intervention. Although achieving these objectives is conceptually simple, varying scientific and social challenges often result in their breakdown. Conceptualizing, designing, and operating programs that better delineate monitoring, management, and risk assessment...

The practice of using rigorous scientific evaluations to study solutions to global poverty is relatively young. Although researchers continue to advance our knowledge of the mechanisms at work, confusion about their role and value persists. Having evidence from specific studies is fine and good, but for policy makers, the point is not simply to understand poverty, but to eliminate it. Do decisions always need to be informed by evidence from the local context? What potential and limits do...

The change Making All Voices Count wants to see is more responsive, accountable governance. The programme has contributed to this change by supporting tech-enabled initiatives which amplify citizen voice and nurture government responsiveness, and by building understanding of when and how the technologies help create and support change. In March 2017, partners from 34 of the programme's projects met with Making All Voices Count staff and associates in South Africa in order to share their...