March news: World Bank VP on avoiding 4 degrees | Aid budget forum | Devpolicy in Dili and Burma | New staff | More

Climate change: avoiding a 4 degree warmer world
Rachel Kyte, Vice President for the Sustainable Development Network, World Bank
Thursday March 21 @ 5.30pm
Barton Theatre, Level 1, JG Crawford Building 132, Lennox Crossing, ANU

According to the World Bank, the world will likely heat up by 4 degrees at the end of the century if the global community fails to act on climate change, triggering a cascade of cataclysmic changes.  Drawing on the influential report on the subject which the Bank released in November of last year, World Bank Vice President Rachel Kyte will speak at the ANU next Thursday about the risk a 4 degree warmer world poses for development, and what we need to do to avoid it. She will also outline the World Bank Group’s efforts to catalyze climate-smart development and green growth. This event is co-sponsored with the ANU’s Centre for Climate Economics and Policy.

Aid budget forum: Wednesday May 15

We are pleased to announce that our inaugural aid budget forum will be held on Wednesday May 15th at the Crawford School here in Canberra. The budget forum will bring together Devpolicy analysis of the budget with the views of a range of stakeholders and commentators. Stay tuned for more details of this not-to-be missed aid event. If you’re coming to Canberra for the budget on the 14th, delay your return flight to make room for this.

Pacific Update 2013
July 8/9 @ANU

Following the success of  the 2012 Pacific Update (more details including video, presentations and a blog series available here) the 2013 Pacific Update will be held on July 8 and 9 here at the ANU. It will be co-sponsored with the Asian Development Bank and the Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies Journal. Stay tuned for more details, including registration information and speakers

Devpolicy in Dili and Burma

Devpolicy Associate Director Robin Davies helped facilitate an international conference on the post-2015 development agenda in Dili, from 25-28 February. Organised by the g7+ group of fragile states, the conference brought together nearly 50 (mostly developing) countries to discuss how the specific development challenges faced by fragile and conflict-affected states should be reflected in the post-2015 framework. Robin Davies provides his reflections in this Devpolicy blog post. Read why, though he’s not exactly a fan of the sprawling post-MDG process, Robin nevertheless thought the conference was a useful “step toward building a sense of collective, if loose, identity among fragile states”.

Meanwhile, Anthony Swan, Research Fellow at the Development Policy Centre, took part in a mission to Burma with Professor Peter Drysdale in late March to look at ways in which ANU’s Crawford School of Public Policy, within which the Development Policy Centre is housed, could collaborate with Myanmar universities, research institutes, and government departments. Look out for Anthony’s Devpolicy Blog piece on his experiences in Myanmar in the near future.

Pacific Conversations

This month Devpolicy Research Associate Tess Newton Cain began a new series on the Devpolicy blog, Pacific Conversations. Tess will engage in a series of interviews with Pacific leaders and influential figures. The first interview is with Peter Forau, the Director General of the Melanesian Spearhead Group Secretariat, available here. Stay tuned for the next in the series, with former PNG Prime Minister and Head of the Pacific Plan Review, Sir Mekere Morauta.

Best of the Development Policy Blog 2012

We have put together a compilation [pdf] of the 12 most popular blogs, by readership, in 2012. These capture the range of interests our Blog covers, and the diversity of our contributors. We hope you enjoy reading it. 

New staff

Grant Walton will be joining the Centre in April as a post-doctoral Research Fellow on the PNG Promoting Effective Public Expenditure (PEPE) project. Grant’s PhD from the University of Melbourne compared policy makers and citizens’ perceptions of corruption in PNG. He has extensive field experience in PNG and elsewhere, and worked with us last year on the PNG PEPE survey.

Dr Richard Curtain has joined the Centre this month as a Visiting Fellow, working on Pacific labour mobility. Richard is a labour market expert with extensive experience as an independent consultant in Australia and the Pacific region.

Tony Hughes, former governor of the Solomon Islands central bank, will join us as a Visiting Fellow starting next week to work on his “what can we learn” project synthezising the lessons [link to his blog] of policy making and advising in the Pacific.

This month we also welcome Ashlee Betteridge back to the Centre as a Research Officer. Ashlee worked for us in 2011/12, and has since worked in Timor-Leste and Indonesia. Combining training and experience in development, public policy and journalism, Ashlee will focus on strengthening our research reach and impact.

Breanna Gasson and Michelle La O will be joining the Centre as interns for the first semester.

Public expenditure and financial management in fragile states  
Marcus Manuel, Alastair McKechnie & Edward Hedger, Centre for Aid & Public Expenditure, Overseas Development Institute
Tuesday March 5

On Tuesday March 5, a panel of speakers from the ODI’s Centre for Aid and Public Expenditure discussed the role of effective and equitable public finance management in fragile states. They highlighted the lessons learned from the centre’s Budget Strengthening Initiative, from aid to Afghanistan,  and from a recent ODI/World Bank study into public finance reforms in post-conflict countries. You can find the speakers presentations here and a podcast of the event here. A video of the event will be available here shortly.

Blog posts

Here is a list of Devpolicy blog posts (organised thematically) since our last newsletter, a month ago. We also provide monthly wraps (buzzes) on Australian aid, global development, education & development, and aid & Asia, as well as fortnightly wraps on the Pacific.

Blog digest

February blog digest: Filling the analytical gap – Australian aid stories by Stephen Howes.

Aid

Key observations on the state of New Zealand’s aid strategy by Joanna Spratt.

Sector on the fiscal cliff by Susan Harris Rimmer.

Construction in educational development: – the ‘edifice complex’? by Robert Cannon.

Development

Gender based violence – exploring the social and economic costs by Andrew Rowell.

The private sector: the new black in women’s economic empowerment by Kate Nethercott and Marianne Jago-Bassingthwaighte.

Debating Why Nations Fail, part II by Cory Smith.

Towards a bloc identity for fragile states: the Dili international conference on the post-2015 development agenda by Robin Davies.

Debating Why Nations Fail, part I by Cory Smith.

Pacific

Online innovation primes Pacific private sector growth by Andrea Iffland.

Peter Forau on why the Melanesian Spearhead Group is a success by Tess Newton Cain.

The Pacific Plan: vague purpose, shaky ownership, fractured implementation by Tony Hughes.

Anti-planning: a submission to the Pacific Plan Review by Peter Larmour.

Fine for Fiji Times raises questions about media freedom by Matthew Dornan.

PNG

Urban primary schools in Papua New Guinea: A decade of (rusty) swings and roundabouts by Grant Walton.

Challenges and opportunities at the frontline of service delivery in PNG: Enga province by Andrew Anton Mako.

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