One idea that drives contemporary environmental justice movements is the right of future generations. This idea recognises that what we do for the sake of “development” today — for example, manufacture products or invent technologies — have an environmental impact and can lead to adverse outcomes in the future. The…

“Is international aid inherently fraught and should we just ‘burn it down’…or is there a way out of this?” That is the question The New Humanitarian recently asked the audience of one of their events. Most who answered were split in roughly two camps: 31% agree that “aid is inherently…

Starts at 02:39 The recent killing of George Floyd and subsequent #BlackLivesMatter protests in the US and globally have reinvigorated discussions about anti-Black racism in all parts of society. The global development and humanitarian aid sector has its own share of issues on racism that remains to be addressed…

What is the best moral framework to use in deciding how to do good? This was the central question in a recent series of episodes of Hidden Brain, a podcast dedicated to discussing what drives human behaviours. In one of the episodes, they interviewed the philosopher Peter Singer, perhaps most…

Aid is at a critical juncture. The coronavirus pandemic is just the latest in a series of crises that have tested the logic behind our interventions; questioned our management abilities; and interrogated whether our values are truly just and transformative. There are renewed calls for aid to change. But it…

Between renowned economists Jeffrey Sachs and William Easterly, there is a decade-long debate that has made them the Taylor Swift and Katy Perry of the international development world. Sachs believes that a highly technical and financially generous “big push” is what’s needed to help people escape the poverty trap. Easterly…

David Graeber, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, recently published the book Bullshit Jobs, where he talks about “jobs which even the person doing the job can’t really justify the existence of, but they have to pretend that there’s some reason for it to exist.” Bullshit jobs are…

Queer Eye is a Netflix reality TV show where five gay guys (the ‘Fab Five,’ as they are known) make-over someone’s life. …

See the full video here Full transcript and slide images below I once provided project management support to a country office in Ethiopia for a conflict response. When I received the draft final report for this project, I found something surprising. There was this question on the donor template: what…