The Crossing

REBOOTING DEVELOPMENT: PROF CALESTOUS JUMA

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Oxley) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:52:44 PST

"Rebooting development: Innovation policy in the age of technological abundance" was the title of the 13th Marie Jahoda Annual Lecture.

It was hosted by SPRU on 7 October 2009.

Full lecture (blip.tv)

ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON...

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Oxley) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:17:03 PST

The Water Symposium's all over now - photos from the symposium are on our flickr - but we're still digesting some of the debates and discussions.

For now, some highlights from Day One, which was mostly taken up by a healthy discussion on climate change:

Kirsten Hastrup from Copenhagen University said that water is an "elemental" or "elementary" factor. (I'm not an anthropologist, so apologies if i've misunderstood the terms, but it makes sense to view water as an "element", where if problems arise, crisis ensues.) We need certainty to act in a responsible way - but in many places, local certainties are being undermined by the fear and uncertainty caused by climate change.

Declan Conway from UEA talked about variability and uncertainty too, but focused on the problems this causes for allocating climate change adaptation funding, among other things. Climate change messes around with thinking based on "stationary" management systems, because we can't fully predict how things will be in 5 or 10 years' time.

Merylyn Hedger (IDS) replied that the science was a bit more certain than that implied (we know dry places will tend to get drier, for example). But she also raised the subject of climate change adaptation funding agreed by developed countries, who may be paying out a lot in the near future. However, this money may well be separated - almost boxed away - from Overseas Development Aid. So the development money and the climate change adaptation money may be in different hands and not co-ordinated in some developing countries - that's not necessarily a good thing.

Finally, the "wicked problem" of the EU Water Framework Directive was used by Laurence Smith (SOAS) to illustrate how many conflicting (and valid) voices there can be in policy planning - farmers, consumers, academics, government, the water industry... There's a long time horizon for "cleaning up" water (loosely, what the WFD is for), but the goalposts will shift over time with climate change - not forgetting the changes in the agricultural market. The best way to involve experts is through a process which keeps coming back and checking what the needs are over time.

That's just one session. More to follow on urbanisation, sanitation, disease, access rights, and ways forward for research/policy/practice, though not necessarily in that order...

STEPS CENTRE WATER SYMPOSIUM

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:58:26 PST

By Julia Day

An opportunity to break out of conventional thinking and forge new alliances has enticed more than 40 water and sanitation development experts gather in Brighton today for the STEPS Centre's Water Symposium.

As part of our on-going research in the water and sanitation, Lyla Mehta and Synne Movik have convened this meeting to bring together people with different perspectives in a bid to bridge the divides that are evident in many of the global forums.

During the recent World Water Forum in Istanbul, water and sanitation debates continue to be framed in rather technocratic terms, disconnected from the everyday needs of poor and marginalised women and men. Discussions often tend to be polarised and charged, e.g. revolving around whether water should be considered as an economic good or a human right, whether to adopt private versus public service provision, etc.

How can we break free of such conventional framings and polarisations, and start thinking more creatively around issues of access, complexity, uncertainty and governance in water and sanitation, bearing in mind health and agriculture linkages?

We believe there is a need for more interdisciplinary engagement on current hot topics such as water/sanitation and climate change and the water and sanitation 'crisis'. We also need to encourage 'blue sky' thinking in terms of research, analysis and action as well as to explore avenues for future research areas and collaborative efforts.

By critically examining uncertain dynamics, governance and learning/appraisal challenges in key policy areas such as climate change, urbanisation and water and sanitation governance, we hope to collectively start to address how alternative pathways can be found that meet the needs of the marginalised in a sustainable and just way.

NEW STEPS PUBLICATIONS: WATER REFORM AND VACCINES

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Oxley) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:49:47 PDT

We've just published two new Working Papers: one on Water reform in South Africa, the other on polio vaccine development. Photo: Growing vegetables near the Driekoppies dam, Lomati river by Synne Movik

In policy discussions in post-apartheid South Africa, existing users were strongly protected, and redistribution to ‘historically disadvantaged individuals’ was seen as risky. The Water Reform paper looks at how that affected the redistribution of water use rights.

The other new Working Paper, on Vaccines, looks at what it takes to allow reliable knowledge to build up in developing a vaccine - and what's missing from current policy debates.

As always, you can download both papers and the summary briefing from our Publications page.

The Dynamics and Discourses of Water Allocation Reform in South Africa
Reforming Water Rights: Dynamics, Discourses and Risks (Summary Briefing)
Knowledge Accumulation and the Development of Poliomyelitis Vaccines

ELINOR OSTROM'S NOBEL PRIZE

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Oxley) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:42:58 PDT

By Lyla Mehta and Melissa Leach

After a surprising Nobel Prize week, Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize award in Economic Sciences, shared with Oliver Williamson, is to be welcomed and celebrated. Photo: Elinor Ostrom courtesy of McGill University

The Prize has been awarded for her analysis of economic governance, especially of resources held as commons, and we are pleased to see public recognition for these 'non-mainstream' economics perspectives.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the economics prize not only to the first woman, but also flagged the importance of cooperation and collective action to safeguard the local and global commons, something urgently required by our planet currently in peril.

Elinor Ostrom has provided transdisciplinary perspectives in the study of institutions and co-operative resource management. Her groundbreaking work on Common Property Resource (CPR) theory has been built up from field studies with communities in Africa and Asia. It takes its theoretical grounding from game theory – looking at collective action dilemmas and focusing on the ways in which institutions or rules can be purposively crafted to produce collective action. It has been central in establishing the significance of local institutions in resource management.

The importance of Elinor Ostrom’s work

Refuting Hardin’s (1968) pessimistic 'tragedy of the commons', her publications have highlighted a variety of conditions under which collective action in resource management operates effectively, such as clear resource boundaries and relative socio-economic homogeneity among users – sometimes presented as 'design principles'. Through the meticulous study of local institutional arrangements in irrigation management, rangelands, fisheries, forests and other CPR regimes around the world, Ostrom and her collaborators at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University have shown us that CPR management neither has to be private nor state driven to be successful. The importance of this analysis in refuting Malthusian and neo-Malthusian thinking about overpopulation, Hobbesian anarchy and resource scarcity has been tremendous, and the credit for this must largely go to Elinor Ostrom. Her work has inspired generations of researchers and students to value and explore local institutional responses to environmental challenges, while giving theoretical underpinning to policy approaches in community-based sustainable development.

The challenges from Elinor Ostrom’s work

Despite her training as a political scientist, Elinor Ostrom draws on the tenets of new institutional economics. Her work is underpinned by economistic perspectives on human behaviour and the notion of a universally rational, self-interested actor. Her approach and messages about the advantages of community control – together with the broader CPR work she has pioneered – have inspired key strands of work within the Knowledge, Technology and Society team (KNOTS) at IDS, but her perspectives also raise challenges which we have sought to address.

The KNOTS Team is working to understand and influence the institutions and power-knowledge relationships that link technology, ecology and society – connecting global debates with local realities through interdisciplinary research, networks and partnerships. Institutional arrangements for natural resource management have been a key concern, drawing on field research on water, rangelands, forests, biodiversity and agricultural livelihoods. Our approaches, bringing together disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, ecology and science and technology studies, complement the CPR literature in exploring how questions of knowledge, power, culture and history shape resource governance. We have also been particularly interested in the implications of dynamic and uncertain contexts for natural resource management.

By not paying enough attention to the nuances of community dynamics, CPR work has often underplayed questions of social difference and the diverse – and sometimes conflicting – interests of resource users. In addition the focus on collective action has tended to direct attention away from the fact that, while institutions can enhance co-operation, they can also be beset with conflict, factional divisions and power politics. The design principles, while very useful, can also appear to be a 'blueprint' for collective action, something that risks ignoring uncertainty and unpredictability, both in terms of human action and in the ecological world.

Elinor Ostrom’s recent work has attempted to engage more fully with some of these issues, moving away from the early rigid approach to design principles and embracing questions about the learning and resilience needed for successful collective action in today’s rapidly changing societies and environments. We look forward to continued fruitful and challenging debate with her and her colleagues, looking across disciplines and perspectives. Notwithstanding these issues, there is much reason to be pleased with the Nobel committee’s decision. The planet urgently needs cooperation, not conflict, in resolving compelling issues such as water shortages and climate change, and in safeguarding our common heritage. Elinor Ostom’s work provides us with the optimism and assurance that this is possible.

Nobel Prize for Economics 2009
The International Association for the Study of the Commons

KNOTS team publications

Mehta, L et al, 1999 'Exploring Understandings of Institutions and Uncertainty New Directions in Natural Resources Management', IDS Discussion Paper 372, Brighton: IDS

Mehta, L, Leach, M. and Scoones, I. , ‘Editorial. Environmental Governance in an Uncertain World’, IDS Bulletin 32: 4, Brighton: IDS

Leach, M., I. Scoones and A. Stirling, forthcoming 2010, Dynamic Sustainabilities: technology, environment, social justice. London: Earthscan

Fairhead, J. and M. Leach, 2003, Science, society and power: environmental knowledge and policy in West Africa and the Caribbean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lyla Mehta is a Research Fellow at IDS with the KNOTS team and Professor II at Noragric, Department of International Environment and Development Studies, Norwegian University of Life Sciences.

Melissa Leach is a Professorial Fellow at IDS and Team leader of KNOTS; she also directs the ESRC STEPS (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Centre.

ADRIAN SMITH ON ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLOGY

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Oxley) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:44:31 PDT

Following Adrian's post on his journey to Argentina, he's added a new presentation from the trip to our Slideshare. If your Spanish isn't up to scratch, it includes some great pictures from the history of the alternative technology movement.

Nichos de tecnología alternativa: una perspectiva Europea

GRASSROOTS INNOVATION

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Oxley) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:38:24 PDT

By Adrian Smith

It is imperative, in my view, that grassroots innovation does not become ghettoised into ‘technologies for the poor’.

Last week I enjoyed a fascinating trip to Argentina, where I talked about grassroots innovation.

The trip was made possible by the Argentine government’s Institute for Industrial Technology (INTI), whose new Quality of Life Programme is just beginning to develop support for grassroots innovations that address problems of poverty and social inclusion in the country. I learnt that ‘social technology’, as they called it, was also of interest in Brazil, where a much larger programme to support social technologies is helped by finance from Bank of Brasil and PetroBras.

But the invitation also came about because my own research on grassroots innovation today and the history of the alternative technology movement in the 1970s and 1980s intrigued STS researchers at the University of Quilmes in Buenos Aires. The team, led by Hernán Thomas, are involved in an IDRC funded research project on ‘social technologies’ in a variety of South American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Perú, and Chile). The Quilmes team were hosting a conference for regional STS scholars on the topic of Technologies for Integration and Development in Latin America, and at which I spoke.

So in the same week, I found myself talking to grassroots innovation activists from across Argentina, and with South American academics debating whether and how social technology could directly address social inclusion and poverty.

On the academic side, there was a lot of debate about concepts and core fundamentals:

- what we meant by social technologies,
- what political economic contexts were required to make them flourish,
- whether current initiatives were palliatives that failed to address the real problem, which was the capitalist order
- or whether social technology programmes provided the necessary, finer grained details and capabilities for the shifts in economic power underway or aspired for by governments like those in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Brazil.

Much of this felt a long way from the UK context. In the UK, grassroots innovation is also about social transformation, but about transformation away from patterns of over-consumption, to put it crudely, and social inclusion is concerned with making sure this move nevertheless improves the lot of our hardest-pressed communities. The instrumental aims of public programmes of support can be limited to nurturing social legitimacy for larger-scale sustainable technologies and economic change.

Obviously, the starker inequalities in Latin America provide grassroots innovation for social transformation with a totally different meaning and purpose. And the current politics in some of the countries, as well as histories of colonialism and experiences with neo-liberalism, meant some pretty core fundamentals were being aired in ways different to policy circles in a UK context.

But at the same time, there were similarities and familiarity. One similarity was a historical resonance. The debates about whether progressive technologies were possible in non-progressive settings reminded me of the debates around Appropriate and Alternative Technology in the 1970s. Taking care not to be anachronistic in the historians’ sense, it nevertheless seemed to me that revisiting and updating those debates, whilst reflecting on the experience of attempts back then, might inform our thinking about grassroots innovation today. In my view, this would result in a more sober consideration of the real possibilities for grassroots innovation, and how its great potential nevertheless needs to be considered as one strand in a broader political programme for democratising technologies of both grassroots and high science varieties.

Another resonance with my experience in the UK was that, whilst some people (mostly academics) were debating all this at the high conceptual level in the conference in Buenos Aires, there was a growing network of people in Argentina just getting on with it, and trying as best they could to grasp some control over the development of technologies and (more accurately) socio-technical practices that they thought might help them improve their immediate situations.

It was great talking with activists at the workshop organised by INTI. These smart people were aware of their limitations, but had an impatient hopefulness and irrepressible urge just to get on with developing socio-technical practices that would address their currently unmet needs. They were busy setting up low-cost housing, local organic food networks for supplying Buenos Aires, co-operatives for developing agricultural technologies for family farms, improving worker safety at wood mills, experimenting with low cost techniques for stripping arsenic from naturally contaminated water supplies, mobilising for better cycling infrastructures, and so on.

There was lots of sharing of ideas at this event. The recurring message was that everybody needed more resources (tinged in some cases with unease about some forms of market-based resource provision). But discussion of broader innovation processes that might help develop these ideas, and the institutional designs that might redistribute resources to those processes, and which could help diffuse, scale-up and translate activity into mass forms, was much less developed. Databases describing the specific ideas, activities, socio-technical practices will not help here (though they are useful).

Databases, case studies, exemplars etc do not indicate what the grassroots and community-based analogues should be to all the institutions that facilitate more conventional, firm-based technological innovation. What programmes are needed to provide the grassroots with the Innovation Centres, Technology Parks, Technical Assistance Services, Innovator Clubs, Scientific Support Services, Education Programmes, and National Innovation Systems? Here I think analysis and some of the reflection coming from the academic conference could help. But those fundamental academic debates need to be mediated and made practical at an intermediate, programmatic and political level.

Programmatically, the challenge is to learn how to support, diffuse, scale up and translate grassroots activities and the inspiring ideas they have. Personally, I think niche theory from the socio-technical transitions literature (combined with social movement theory) is promising; which is why I continue working in that area (when funding permits!). I think it might be able to mediate between the activists and the political economists. The challenge is to flesh out the political processes that will give programmes for grassroots innovation greater legitimacy, resources, and weight in economic development than currently is the case.

I talked about this in my presentation at the STEPS symposium last month.

Some people are way of ahead of me in this kind of thinking. My trip to Argentina, engaged me with people who have some fascinatingly potent ideas. But I do think it is at the intermediate programmatic level - between enthusiastic projects and favourable high-level changes in political economy - that we need to be working.

It is imperative, in my view, that grassroots innovation does not become ghettoised into ‘technologies for the poor’. Grassroots innovation is one strategy in a portfolio of programmes aimed at democratizing technology and directing innovation for greater social equality. In my view, this means that intermediate programmes for grassroots innovations cannot be limited to supporting specific projects and networks. It needs also to articulate the grassroots innovation experience into more dominant and conventional innovation policy programmes. What I call translation processes are important here: Grassroots innovations might provide ideas for how to democratise high-science innovation, e.g. articulating demand for different end-uses, alternative kinds of expert-practitioner-citizen-politician relationship. So, our analysis cannot restrict its focus on a single (grassroots) pathway for STI, but rather seek to understand how empowered grassroots pathways might enable their more symmetrical role in national and international innovation agendas.

STEPS SYMPOSIUM: REDISTRIBUTING INNOVATION

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Oxley) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 02:42:49 PDT

By Julian Pineres Ramirez, PhD student, CENTRIM, Brighton University

"What opportunities are presented by the global redistribution of innovative activity?" was the title of Session 3. The questions of how knowledge can be spread around the world, and how less advantaged regions could capture part of its economic and social benefits, remain a concern for policy makers, academics and companies. Photo: Anabel Marin by Lance Bellers

There is still an assumption that regions or nations which produce knowledge systematically, and who therefore are able to create value through innovations, are wealthier than the ones which do not.

These days, it seems that most innovation, as well as the resultant benefits, is highly concentrated in MNCs (Multinational Corporations) and developed regions (the US, Japan and some European countries). This is perhaps explained by the fact that there is more competence in those markets, making the speed of technological change faster day by day. And organisations, MNCs or regions which have developed capabilities (eg infrastructure and skilled human resources) are more capable of responding to market opportunities. This creates a larger gap with those that stay behind.

Who is responsible, then, for creating the circumstances in which the opportunities arising from innovation can be appropriated, not just for the most competent bodies, but also for the ones who are left behind? On the one hand, MNCs prioritise their own economic interest over all else, and governments in developed regions need to keep their own development on track; on the other hand, governments in less developed regions have urgent priorities, fewer resources and institutional problems, and companies within those regions have to concentrate on surviving in the market. Under these conditions, promoting sustainable development and long term technological strategies seem to be low on the list of concerns of less developed regions.

This makes for a complex situation. What’s needed is an alignment and convergence of purposes, which doesn’t seem to have happened yet. We still need suitable mechanisms which would allow a balance between the economic and social interest produced by innovation activities.

But, more than the social situation described above, an understanding is needed of what “innovation” means within different contexts. Can innovative activities only be high-knowledge and scientific ones, or can they also be those that respond to local needs? In other words, there should be a recognition of indigenous knowledge, giving it the true value it deserves, especially in less developed regions.

So the distribution of innovation should not be understood just as a transfer process from highly developed regions to less developed ones; but as a process of mutual understanding and acknowledgment of difference and cultural constructions. Otherwise, the commercial model of distributing innovation will prevail: one where those with fewer resources are paying for innovation without receiving or producing any value themselves. This increases even more the levels of inequality, poverty and so on.

There are however some examples of where this situation has changed and some opportunities have been created for those countries who have taken the risk of making more systematic and sustainable political decisions. This is perhaps the case in China, India, and to some extent a few Latin American countries (Brazil, Argentina and Chile), where the government encourages and supports indigenous innovation, and companies understand the opportunities available through networks and capacity building.

It follows that the Manifesto should include an accurate conception of what is meant by the distribution of innovation. Some ideas raised from the Symposium could be: first, that there should be a recognition and mutual understanding of indigenous knowledge within a globalised context; second, that responsibilities should be shared but come mostly from each country; and third, that in the long term, a sustainable development is only possible if innovative activities come from a systematic construction, over time, of local capabilities, where local actors are involved – rather than just the transfer of technology through conventional commercial activities or the allocation of multinational subsidiaries.

STEPS SYMPOSIUM: REALITY CHECK

noreply@blogger.com (Katharina Welle) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:29:58 PDT

By Katharina Welle, STEPS Centre PhD student

The New Manifesto, presented by Adrian Ely on day one of the STEPS Centre Symposium, argues for three crucial shifts in thinking about innovation for development and sustainability: directions, diversity and distribution. But, how can these conceptual arguments be applied to address the realities faced by poor people today? Photo: Banji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka by Lance Bellers

In a nutshell, the 3-D agenda argues for:

Directionality – moving away from a linear, uni-directional and dominant model of progress towards recognising that alternative directions may be relevant depending on the context.

Distribution – shifting focus towards innovations that address the concerns of the poor rather than those of the rich.

Diversity – upholding a diversity of knowledges from which to innovate.

In his response to this agenda, Oyebanji Oyeyinka, UN-Habitat, argued that there is a disconnect between current innovation debates and the big UN agendas of alleviating poverty i.e. the Millennium Development Goals. Innovation, according to him, is largely glossed over in the MDGs although science and technology advances bear important challenges and opportunities towards achieving poverty reduction that need to be reflected upon.

This is clear in Tanzania, where the Ministry of Water and Irrigation is currently holding its yearly sector review. The new and exciting innovation in the sector is the use of mobile phone technology to report non-functional water points. In many countries of Sub-saharan Africa, the average non-functionality rate of water points is around 30% thus substantially reducing access to water to prospective users.

However, follow-up has been very poor in many countries, not last (but not only) because of a communication breakdown between water point committees and district water officers and failures in reporting non-functionality upwards in the sector. Now, the ministry intends to remedy this by equipping district water officers with mobile phones that allow them to directly report the status of water points to a centralised government database. At the same time, citizens will be able to text (hopefully toll-free) reports of non-functional water points to a publicly available and independent website.

While the technical side of this innovation is very exciting, there are many open questions with regard to directionality and distribution – who will benefit and how is not clear. For example, what implications arise for local level governance when water officers and citizens alike text failure reports to a website and a central data base? Will this have positive or negative implications for the downward accountability of district water officers and the district government? Who will respond to a text coming from a rural area somewhere in Tanzania? Will there be a polite customer reply like “Thank you, we have received your report and will deal with it in due course”? In a nutshell - is this innovation debilitating or strengthening government accountability for service provision in Tanzania?

It is these kinds of issues that the New Manifesto ought to be able to address. Its success depends on whether it is able to engage with debates surrounding the new, exciting innovations occurring in countries like Tanzania today.

STEPS SYMPOSIUM: MULTIMEDIA

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 06:04:54 PDT

By Julia Day

We had a great Symposium last week, with an engaged audience who were game enough to participate in some video interviews, answering one question: “If you had to make one recommendation to the UN, or another global body, about the future of innovation for sustainability and development, what would it be?”

More than 20 delegates gave us a recommendation, including Xiulan Zhang, Sheila Jasanoff, Anil Gupta, Suman Sahai (below), Raphie Kaplinsky, Hiroyuki Kubota, Des Turner MP and many more.

If you haven’t yet had a chance to have a look at the new website for the Manifesto project, then now is your chance. All of the material from the Symposium is online. Including:

Video vox pop
Blogs from the Symposium. Some IDS and SPRU students blogged for us at the event - Julian Pineres Ramirez, Sara Wolcott and Oliver Johnson. Their posts appear on here on the STEPS Centre blog, The Crossing.
Speaker presentations are available to view, share and download from our Slideshare site.
Photos from the Symposium are on our Flickr page. All photos by Lance Bellers.
And of course, our Twitter followers have been kept up-to-date too.

STEPS SYMPOSIUM: DEMOCRATISING INNOVATION

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:34:17 PDT

By Oliver Johnson

The penultimate session of the STEPS Centre symposium - Democratising innovation: towards more accountable institutions - threatened to be a rather tired affair: afternoon slots are always at risk of hypnotising participants in their post-lunch drowsiness. Photo: Des Turner MP by Lance Bellers

However, enthusiastic responses by the panel of Des Turner MP, Richard Jolly and Brian Wynne to an energetic ‘provocation’ by Andy Stirling made for a lively debate culminating in some thoughtful recommendations.

The discussion began with Manifesto’s recommendations for institutional reform as a way of addressing the vector properties of innovation paths (the which way and who says and why) – or as Andy Stirling put it “performing institutional judo at a constitutional level”.

The debate that followed centred on the question of whether the Manifesto should seek to propose more radical changes to the existing power structure or new actions within the existing structure. I was immediately transported to an episode of the BBC comedy Blackadder Goes Forth in which the proletariat Private Baldrick offers to marry into aristocracy to save his colleague. When asked what has happened to his revolutionary principles, he replies “I'm working to bring down the system from within”.

The arguments for and against working within existing power structures crop up time and time again in a variety of different debates. Consistently running through my mind was the limited - at this early stage - ‘Southern’ or ‘developing country’ input into the design of the Manifesto – a manifesto intended to benefit those parts of the world. I appreciated Brian Wynne’s suggestion that by focusing on Western institutions space can be created within which poorer countries can have more freedom to determine the direction, distribution and diversity of their responses to the problems they face.

But that merely opens up another set of concerns. Will they use that space, and if so how? At what point, if at all, do we have the right to get involved if the space is not used in a way we think it should be? These are tricky questions, but this is not a simple issue.

Perhaps the drafters of the Manifesto should look to their own advice on how to proceed. When faced with the food for thought generated by the symposium it might be pertinent to ask which bits to eat, who says so and why?

Oliver Johnson is a DPhil student in the Sussex Energy Group at SPRU

STEPS SYMPOSIUM: IMPACT OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:18:20 PDT

By Sara J Wolcott

Hardly surprisingly, the implications of the Financial Crisis of 2008 was a sub-theme of the Symposium. Several participants noted that there seems to be less money than there used to be – funding for the cutting edge projects that advance alternative knowledge systems is harder to come by than it used to be. Photo: Xiulan Zhang by Lance Bellers

Xiulan Zhang, Dean of the School of Social Development and Public Policy at Beijing Normal University in China, discussed how first the Asian financial crisis and now this current one is presenting the opportunity to reshape social policy and create a new welfare state agenda, including making cities attractive places to live, investing in children, greater safety nets and giving skilled rural migrants greater access to loans.

There are, however, other ways that the Financial Crisis of 2008 is relevant to a discussion of innovation. First, financial innovations are, themselves, sites of technological innovation – and quite influential on the lives of people around the world, as recent events reminded us. Second, and in some ways more important but harder to tease out, are the ways of thinking that pervade the financial system. Finance is often called the ‘brain of economy’. This ‘brain’ has a certain way of thinking, of making decisions and determining values. That way of thinking influences the rest of the socio-economic system. Shifting how this ‘brain’ interacts with the world whose destiny it so often influences is vitally important.

Right now, the New Manifesto does not include or emphasize financial innovations –a field few have true expertise in. I certainly don’t. But if the Manifesto can find ways to connect science and finance, it will take some important steps towards enabling that ‘brain’ to be critiqued; and to enable multiple ‘brains’ to direct and shape the socio-political-economic system.

Sara is an MA student in Science, Society and Development at the Institute of Development Studies

STEPS SYMPOSIUM: PREACHING TO THE CHOIR?

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:03:42 PDT

By Sara J Wolcott

One knows one has a good symposium when the participants are not afraid to ask challenging questions. Such as, what is the point of the New Manifesto? Did the original Sussex Manifesto really do that much – and can the new one do even as much as the first? And how does one influence socio-political change, anyways?

Sheila Jasanoff raised the ‘radical disconnect’ between dominant public policy voices such as Barak Obama’s vision for a future that includes ‘science diplomats’ who might not necessarily consider the rich knowledge bases that already exist in those other cultures, on the one hand, and the visions in the STEPS manifesto which lifted up the innovative capacity of people on the ground to respond to environmental change. How can documents such as this Manifesto effect the more dominant visions and voices? Check out Jasanoff’s recent piece in SEED magazine for a longer (and more eloquent) exploration of these tensions.

The bright minds behind the Manifesto are well aware that documents are only one step in influencing political change. But the participants challenged them (and perhaps all of us) to go further. As several who were experienced with the struggle to change politics said, you don’t change politics by coming up with better ideas. Its much more difficult - and confrontational. Even getting science policies to be explicit about their political stance (much less changing or influencing those politics) does not look to be an easy struggle.

The New Manifesto is still in its early draft stages. And the process of drafting the document includes taking it to ‘unlikely partners’, as well as the ‘choir’. Can the STEPS Centre take on board these critiques, and successfully struggle with how a document can influence socio-political change? I believe so, but we will see.

Sara is an MA student in Science, Society and Development at the Institute of Development Studies

STEPS SYMPOSIUM: MOVING BEYOND THE NORTH-SOUTH DIVISION IN DEVELOPMENT

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:44:30 PDT

By Sara J Wolcott

Brian Wynne wasn’t the only one who pointed it out, but he was particularly eloquent: he felt that when he analyzed and critiqued Northern institutions, he was, in a way, doing work for international development. He helps open the space and the possibility for researchers, intellectuals and citizens from developing countries to critique their own institutions and assumptions, and challenge the models from the north that work for neither the North nor the South. Photo: Brian Wynne by Lance Bellers

His comments reflect an undercurrent in the Symposium: that the North-South divide that has defined international development are no longer fully applicable. Working in the North can influence the south and vice versa.

While not assuming that poverty – or wealth – is identical in developed or developing countries, increasingly, global challenges and increasingly mobile people and ideas suggest that new models of international development are needed that go beyond these overly simplistic divisions. Increasingly, we see convergence of interests and ideas around the global challenge of climate change.

There were different ideas of what that meant. Some argued for a ‘3 pole’ approach: ‘West’, China/India and the South (Africa and South America – excluding, I assume, Brazil). Others argued for a people-centered perspective, one that suggests as many ‘poles’ or points of reference as there are people. I hope that the ‘new’ vision of international development includes the humility to recognize that all countries, and all people, are developing, with no one ever obtaining a state of ‘full’ development.

Sara is an MA student in Science, Society and Development at the Institute of Development Studies

STEPS SYMPOSIUM: ARE WE AFRAID OF INNOVATION?

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:43:51 PDT

By Sara J Wolcott

While not surprised that innovation was a major theme at the 2009 STEPS Centre Symposium, I was surprised to learn how little innovation is mentioned or critically understood in either the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) or in global responses to Climate Change. Photo: Anil Gupta by Lance Bellers

The MDGs only mention innovation in regard to information technology. The UNFCCC emphasizes mitigation, adaptation, technology transfer and capacity building. Little emphasis is put on the need for developing countries to innovate. Innovation, if talked about at all, is in the context of developed countries innovating and then transferring that technology to developing countries.

In short, as one participant pointed out, there exists a common assumption that poor countries don’t need to innovate. And too often, imposed innovation can become yet another form of imperialism.

Of course, innovation happens in poor countries all the time. Anil Gupta, founder of the Honey Bee Network, pointed to dozens of practical innovations by poor people for poor people that scientists in labs have never dreamed about.

In considering the lack of innovation in major international discussions from the MDGs to Climate Change, I wondered, are we afraid of innovation? For all that innovation pervades Western public policy discussions as a silver bullet for future growth, this distinct avoidance of innovation for developing countries hints at a darker shadow to those discussions.

Perhaps the better question is, whose innovation are we afraid of? Innovation hinges upon that fundamental human capacity to be the Creator, shaping and transforming objects, patterns of living, and even peoples lives. To be a Creator is to have power. When innovations are taken to the marketplace, that power of creation can turn into financial power - a domain that many wish to keep for themselves.

By keeping developing country’s ability to innovate off the agenda, dominant powers consciously or unconsciously keep at least some of that power to themselves. Or at least, they try to do so. Humans are inherently creative and innovative, no matter where they are. People will continue to innovate, creating and re-creating their lives. But the longer such basic human nature is ignored, the longer it will take for us the rest of us – no matter where we are – to learn from and benefit from everyone’s innovations.

Sara is an MA student in Science, Society and Development at the Institute of Development Studies, UK

STEPS SYMPOSIUM: INNOVATION, SUSTAINABILITY, DEVELOPMENT

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:46:13 PDT

By Julia Day

We live in a time of transformations. The collapse of the Washington “consensus”, the financial crisis, the rise of China and other emerging economies and, of course, the threat of global climate change call for a rethinking of existing institutions, structures and paradigms. Photo: Lance Bellers

At the same time a renewed democratic spirit is mobilising sections of global civil society with hopes of radical reform. However, the agenda for the Copenhagen climate talks seems to fall short of this goal, and the G8 declaration from Abruzzo leaves many unanswered questions.

Especially unclear is the precise role of science, technology and different forms of innovation in tackling the multitude of challenges, and the ways in which they can be co-ordinated to respond to urgent needs at different levels of society.

In this time of change, the STEPS Centre focused its Annual Symposium on the emerging themes, challenges and opportunities that current reconfigurations present for innovation, sustainability and development. You can have a look at the programme here and the participants list.

We drew together academics, policy-makers, civil society and private sector representatives together to discuss positive reforms at international, national and local levels that will link innovation to the goals of poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability.

The Symposium forms part of the STEPS Centre project, Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto

We thought we would take advantage of having so many interesting people in the same place at the same time and colelct a variety of materials on the day. So we recorded video vox pop throughout the day, and have posted the presentations on our Slideshare site, and photos on our Flikr page.

We also had some bloggers at the event - Julian Pineres Ramirez, Sara Wolcott and Oliver Johnson - thier posts will appear here on The Crossing.

INNOVATION, SUSTAINABILITY, DEVELOPMENT: A NEW MANIFESTO

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 07:00:55 PDT

By Julia Day

Our New Manifesto project is now live, with 13 new papers, a new microsite and a wiki-timeline mapping over 50 years of science and innovation for development.

Contributions are most welcome to the project, which is an attempt not just to devise recommendations for future policies that allow environmentally sustainable and pro-poor innovation pathways to flourish, but to build an alliance of networks intersted in this area.

It is quick and easy to contribute key publications or events to the wiki-timeline - you just have to fill in a form and press 'send' - we will do the rest. So there is no grappling with time-consuming registration. Hopefully the timeline will be a useful resource - there are already over 70 key dates on it.

Also on the new microsite is information on how to organise a Manifesto round table event. We have several events taking place around the world this autumn, and have produced a convenor's pack to make staging an event, big or small, as easy as possible.

You can also find multimedia material from the New Manifesto seminar series - video and audio clips and presentations. Have a look, and do join in the debate, either here on the blog or by emailing info@anewmanifesto.org

COUNTDOWN TO COPENHAGEN: 82 DAYS TO GO

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 07:03:19 PDT

By Julia Day

As December's UN conference on climate change creeps ever closer, an exclusive story in today's Guardian reveals that a dispute bewteen the US and Europe over treaty rules is threatening progress and weaken a deal at COP15.

The story by environment correspondent David Adam, reveals: "Differences have emerged over the structure of an international treaty on global warming.

"Sources on the European side say the US appraoch could undermine the treaty and weaken the world's ability to cut carbon emissions." The US, according to the Guardian's sources, intend to replace almost all of the Kyoto architecture with a system of its own design.

Adding a note of extreme urgency to proceedings ahead of Tuesday's climate change meeting of 100 world leaders in New York, Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary general tells the Guardian "that negotiations had stalled and need to "get moving".

Meanwhile, The Independent reports on a warning to politicians from a group of doctors that the poorest people in society will be hit first by a global health catastrophe if climate change is not effectively tackled at COP15.

Malaria, dengue fever and other tropical diseases would increase, say the doctors whose concerns were voiced in letters to The British Medical Journal and The Lancet.

BEYOND BIOSAFETY

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:06:01 PDT

In developing countries, debates around transgenic crops have tended to focus on biosafety and its regulation at the risk of ignoring broader ethical concerns. A new project by the STEPS Centre, is exploring how to open-up these debates among civil society actors.

The Institute of Development Studies has featured an article by Sally Brooks, convenor of the Beyond Biosafety project, talking a little bit about the project and the issues it hopes to address.

WORLD WATER WEEK, FRI: WATER ACROSS BORDERS

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:32:21 PDT

By Julia Day

Delegates arrived today slightly weary from a week of networking (or last evening's Royal Banquet festivities with Sweden's Orlando Bloom-alike Prince). Nonetheless it is a good turnout for the closing plenary, which is attempting to sum up the key messages emerging from World Water Week.

Managing water across borders was one of the key themes this week. The politcal and economic trade-offs involved in transboundary water management and the difficulties in sahring the benfits 'beyond the river' were discussed in several sessions.

Water flows 'uphill' ,towards the power-brokers, therefore tranfer 'downhill'is needed, the increased reach of legal conventions may help, some sessions concluded, meanwhile negotiation needed to be separated from cooperation.

Some opportunities for progress in this areas were pinpointed, including leveraging the interest in climate change ro promote water issues, and consider the interaction of hyro and carbon cycles.

The potential of thrid parties to gather data and mediate was expresssed, while virtual water and food trade was mooted as a partial solution for water resource management. The use of technology was stressed, for instance,the ability of improved treatment technolgies for making unvconventional water resources more readily available.

Howver the obstacles to progress in this area are numerous, according to the what was discussed in session this week. Limited access to data, the gap between theory and practice, inadequate basin-wide processes, unfair distribution of water costs, power asymmetry, gaps in institutional infrastructure were just some among the challenegs presented.

But innovative and grounded approaches can be trialled, it was concluded. Alternative financial sources within basins could be saught; the role of techonolgy in conflict resolution could be investigated, such as desalination in the Middle East.Bottom-up appraoches were advocated as was investment in training and capacity-building and not giving up on proven methods.

WORLD WATER WEEK, THURS: TOWARDS COP-15

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:13:48 PDT

By Julia Day

It is the turn of the big-hitters this afternoon, with a panel made up of water Ministers from around the world. They were tasked with revealing how they plan to bring water and climate change together to advocate for stronger global action at the forthcoming climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, COP-15. With time running out before COP-15 – just three months to go – rousing language and calls to action were the order of the day. (Photo: Gunilla Carlsson / Julia Day).

Usually the water and climate change communities operate in their own silos, which many believe will hamper potential outcomes at COP-15. But with the crunch creeping ever-closer, can the two areas of interest work together for mutual benefits?

To kick us off, Henk van Schaik, of the Cooperative Programme on Water and Climate (CPWC) offered us and the Ministers some reflections on the week’s key issues so far.

Mr van Schaik, said the relationship between climate change and water management has been a key area of discussion throughout the week: “We should not wait for a silver bullet on climate information, but make use of credible climate scenarios such as coastal protection, agriculture, hydro power and drinking water supply, and response measures should be designed accordingly.”

The financing of projects, capacity-building to establish climate information centres and networks in the public domain, making use of local traditions, as well as local, country and regional ‘no regret’, best practice, actions were all hot topics, according to Mr van Schaik.

Heading towards COP15, it needs to be recognised that water is more than a sector, it is a medium, he said. The Nairobi Statement on Climate Change Adaptation for Land and Water Management has already stressed the links between land and water and climate in relation to the development agenda and development resources.

“The water community stands ready to cooperate with the climate community on planning processes, actions and capacity,” said Mr van Schaik. “For the (upcoming) World Climate Conference, we call for service-oriented climate information, for climate information to be seen as a public good, and for the development of regional climate centres and networks,” he concluded.

Reflections from Karin Lexen, of event organiser the Stockholm International Water Institute, said she though the key message from this week was one of support and appreciation for the hard work going in to reaching a strong and fair agreement on climate change and that water is key medium through which climate change impact will be felt. As such, water as a medium for climate adaptation should be properly addressed.

Ms Lexen said managing water resources effectively is central to successful adaptation planning. Adaptation measure needs integrated with other development goals - including the MDGs - as well as with land and forest management and ecosystem protection.

She was one of many this afternoon calling for the sharing of information between water and climate change communities at all levels. Vulnerability assessment was also critical, she said, but both new and additional investments were needed to fund the necessary work.

Tineke Huizinga, Vice Minister for Transport, Public Works and Water Management of The Netherlands said that with COP-15 only three months away, she was glad the role of water management in adaptation has become common ground.

“Adaptation will be one of four blocks of negotiation at COP15. Water management deserves due attention and can’t be missed in adaptation strategies of any country therefore water cannot be missed in the COP statement,” said Ms Huizinga, adding that water does not respect boundaries, and that climate adaptation needs to be placed in context of water basins and river courses.

“In the context of development challenges, water can be a driving force behind development and reduction of poverty…Good water management is essential in reaching seven of the MDGs,” she said, adding.

She too, joined the calls for water community to come together with other ‘sectors’ ahead of COP-15: “We have a lot in common with the development community therefore we should join forces.” And she added her voice to those calling for the sharing of knowledge and best practices across sectors, countries and regions.

“It is now time to act on adaptation, we must prepare ourselves,” said Ms Huizinga, “This would be an amazing opportunity to link development and water to reach the MDGs.”

Tanzania’s Minister for Water and Irrigation, Mark Mwandosoya, told the audience that climate change scenarios in Tanzania suggest temperature increases of between 1-3 degrees centigrade over next 100 years. Floods and droughts are going to become even more frequent, said Mr Mwandosoya, and in a country where agriculture jobs account for 80 per cent of the work force, water is crucial: “Water is life. It is a key resource as it affects all other sectors of the economy.”

Gunilla Carlsson, Minister for International Development Cooperation, Sweden, made some strongly-worded statements about her government’s stance ahead of COP-15.

“All countries need to take action to provide sustainable development. Climate change is felt everywhere, we can already see it is happening, but it is affecting the poorest first and worst,” Ms Carlsson said.

She went to some lengths to stress what she called the ‘human dimension’ underlying climate change – that individuals and communities are already adapting to climate change, so the capacity for people to continue adapting needs to be built, she believes: “There is a huge need for adaptation measures – but it is equally important to build adaptation capacity so humans can deal with the changes - so we need further invest in education and health and social safety nets.”

And the issue of gender equality is key, according to the Swedish Minister: ““For the majority of woman a better life depends on safe, fresh water…they have a crucial role in all water activities.”

And she concluded with a commitment that “Sweden is putting adaptation to climate change on the agenda to COP 15 – and we are deeply committed to an ambitious outcome”

Syed Ashraful Islam, Minister of Local Government, Rural Development & Cooperatives, Bangladesh bluntly stated what he – coming from the most densely-populated nation on Earth - sees as the basic problem: “We have a limited amount of water on this planet but the users of water are increasing…the world’s population is now 6.5 billion but by 2050 it will be 9.2 billion.”

But his main issue was that of transboundary water management, which he does not believe has been discussed enough: “Bangladesh alone has 57 common rivers with other countries…We have found that it is often difficult to come to a consensus for sharing water of the rivers and we are lacking international mechanisms and understanding in UN on how to share common rivers.

“Today we must find a better mechanism for sharing of the water of common rivers and if we fail to do so countries will face increasing problems,” and he called for the World Water Week statement to agree on some common ground on this issue ahead of COP15.

“We must adopt a resolution in Copenhagen for all UN states to share common rivers and water bodies in a better way and we must correlate water management with land and forest management,” said the Bangladeshi Minister. “If we don’t, water management [alone]will not give us enough benefit.”

And he concluded on a very dramatic note: “We need the planet for our survival but it does not need us. Before we were here the dinosaurs ruled the planet - they are no longer here but the planet is. The way we are behaving, we will go the same way as the dinosaurs.”

WORLD WATER WEEK: PHOTOS

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:15:03 PDT

Have a look at some of our photos from World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden.

WORLD WATER WEEK - THURSDAY - WATER & CLIMATE

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:37:41 PDT

By Julia Day

Despite being organised to within an inch of its life here at the Stockholmsmassan conference centre, World Water Week's morning sessions are already running behind. Has there ever been a conference that runs on time? Answers on a postcard, please. Anyway, I am sitting in on a session entitled ‘From Theory to Reality: Sustainable Water Management in an uncertain Climate’. (Photo: Duncan Pollard / Julia Day).

First up, Duncan Pollard of World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), who says we need to treat water management as a journey which embraces uncertainty as he outlines some of the organisation's work on freshwater adaptation.

“Uncertainty is no excuse for inaction – we need to start now and act fast. There needs to be a willingness in terms of managing in terms of uncertainty and need to develop water management institutions and processes that operate with uncertainty," said Mr Pollard.

Francesca Bernardini, UNECE, believes that transboundary cooperation in adaptation reduces uncertainty and costs.

But few countries have developed strategies on water and adaptation to climate change. There are no strategies at transboundary levels, she said, despite the Convention of the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes.

She outlines some key recommendations – flexible legal agreements, entrusting joint institutions with adaptation and the development of information exchange using the same models to allow comparison. There should be vulnerability assessment for the whole basin while measures should be agreed on common no/low regret actions and goals.

“Although this seems like common sense, this is not happening,” said Ms Bernardini. "So we need partners," she concludes and invites the audience to join forces for pilto projects in transboundary basins and to share knowledge and experience.

The World Bank’s Dr Rafik Hirji runs through some of the Bank’s facts and figures and states the party line: “Climate change must not come at the cost of development” – essentially, addressing both issues together. For water and climate change there is a two-pronged attack of adaptation and mitigation designed to support Bank operations and client countries in making water investment decisions.

And he outlines the Bank’s dilemma: “Essentially we know much less than we should but must make investment and financing decisions nonetheless…we cannot wait for the science,” said Dr Hirji. “Uncertainties are a given and we just have to deal with it.”

He adds: “Managing risk and uncertainty is not new in the water sector – there is just more now. The past record cannot be used for future designs.” There is that word again – uncertainty. It could well be word of the day.

Dr Hirji said the Bank has both top-down and bottom-up strategies that work in tandem across its 212 projects – sprinkling the words ‘no regrets’, ‘good practice’ and ‘sustainable’ around while talking about these projects.

The Bank has formulated a seven point decision framework to make decisions on water and climate change adaptation investments and is just starting to test this framework in its project cycle. This framework is intended to support the identification, preparation and implementation of operations, he added.

The STEPS Centre’s pathways approach focuses on working with uncertainty in a highly complex world of dynamic social, technological and ecological processes where conflicting priorities exist amongst different people.

Conventional analysis and policy approaches are well-attuned to handling risk, but are inadequate where these other kinds of incertitude prevail.

But dynamic systems and contexts involve various forms of incertitude, whether it be risk (where probabilities amongst possible outcomes are known), uncertainty (where probabilities cannot be assigned), ambiguity (where there are different, incommensurable views of outcomes) or ignorance (where we don’t know what we don’t know). We need options that are flexible and adaptable enough to work in this changing environment.

WORLD WATER WEEK, STOCKHOLM

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:39:03 PDT

By Julia Day

Here in the Swedish capital of Stockholm the 19th annual World Water Week is in full swing. Having only arrived this evening, there is a lot to catch up on ahead of the STEPS Centre session on Liquid Dynamics on Friday.

Nearly 2,500 scientists, policymakers, business leaders, NGOs and media from 136 countries have gathered here, in a city built on and around water, to discuss and exchange learning about the world's most pressing water and sanitation issues.

Running over three years is the event's "niche" of 'Responding to global changes: Accessing water for the common good'. Within that niche, the special focus for 2009 is on transboundary waters.

The organiser of World Water Week, the Stockholm International Water Institute believes transboundary water systems represent a particularly complex management and policy challenges. Of all the world's accessible freshwater, 96 per cent is located in aquifers, many of which cross national boundaries, according to the SIWI.

"If not properly managed, transboundary waters can become a source of conflict. However, through the joint dependencies of the users, those waters can also be a source of collaboration and spur regional development. Solutions need to emerge through new thinking that transcends traditional concerns about competitive access," the event programme states.

It is new thinking that this whole event is aiming to draw out. And with more than one billion people lacking access to safe, clean drinking water, 2.6 billion lacking access to adequate sanitation and 6,000 babies dying every day from waterbourne diseases, new thinking is desperately needed.

But there remains a big disconnect between the gloabl rhetoric and the everyday realities of poor and marginalised people who have to live with the devastation wrought by lack of access to clean water and adequate sanitation.

One of the targets of Millennium Development Goal seven is to halve the proportion of people living without access to water and sanitation by 2015. But the target on sanitation is way off-track. In sub-Saharan Africa, at the current rate of progress, it will not be met until 2076 - 61 years late, according to charity WaterAid.

Earlier this week the International Water Management Institute and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have warned that Asia must reform its water use to feed 1.5 billion extra people by 2050. A sobering thought.

NATURE ARTICLE ON GM FROM STEPS

noreply@blogger.com (Julia Day) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:20:20 PDT

Ian Scoones, co-director of the ESRC STEPS Centre and Dominic Glover of the Technology and Agrarian Development Group at Wageningen University have written an article in this week's Nature magazine (August 13) which explores the fallout of a new book on agricultural biotechnology in Africa.

Scoones and Glover take a look at the Robert Paarlberg's book Starved for Science: how biotechnology is being kept out of Africa

"A dogmatic and unscientific stance on GM crops – whether pro or anti – helps no one, and least of all African farmers. Paarlberg‟s book has stirred up the debate again, but in ways that do not move it forward," write Scoones and Glover.

"A less combative, more evidence-based and balanced approach is needed, one that should foster a diversity of development pathways for agriculture16. All of these should be underpinned by high-quality scientific research and attuned to particular circumstances.

"As the World Bank‟s World Development Report on Agriculture and the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) both indicate, biotechnology options of many kinds will surely be part of the mix, but they will not be the only solution; and, for Africa, not necessarily the major one either," they add.

An full-lenth version of the Nature article is avilable on the Biotechnology Research Archive pages of the STEPS website - GM Crops in Africa: polarising the debate.