Why we must reframe ideas about global development
Posted on: 17 November 2016
Geographer and social anthropologist, Professor Melissa Leach, Director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex, spoke about the need to reframe ideas of global development as she delivered the 2016 Kapuscinski Development Lecture in Trinity.
She spoke to a packed audience of over 150 people, while a further 250 participated from afar via webcast and a subsequent Q&A session. Her lecture was entitled Challenging Inequalities and Unsustainabilities. It can be viewed here.
Professor Leach’s interdisciplinary, policy-engaged research in Africa and beyond links health, environment, technology and gender, with particular interests in knowledge, power and the politics of science and policy processes.
She spoke about the need to understand why development requires a broader scope than one that focuses on economics and poverty, incremental improvement, linear change, and knowledge transfer to identifiable populations in the Global South.
Additionally — she said — we must deepen our understanding of the complexity of inequality, the universality of development globally, the drive towards transformation, and the need for mutual, multi-way learning, understanding and knowledge formation.
Professor Leach identified seven types of inequality (economic, political, cultural, social, intellectual (knowledge), environmental, and spatial) that interact to form barriers to sustainability and explained how consideration of these different types of inequality can and should inform solutions to address the three main challenges to which she spoke – reducing inequality; accelerating sustainability; and building inclusive and secure societies.
She spoke about the importance of engaging citizens, and of innovative alliances between states, markets and technologies. Alliances can — she said — then help to build sustainable, secure societies and evolve ‘safe spaces’ to ‘safe and just spaces’.
Mr Jim Clarken, CEO of Oxfam Ireland and Oxfam International, added that ignoring intersecting inequalities causes communities a great deal of harm. Using cases of land rights and state investment decisions, he explained how multiple forms of inequality and unsustainability interact to generate new forms and faces of inequality and unequal distributions of the burdens (as opposed to the benefits) of development.
He ended his response by calling global and local actors to action. He called upon the Irish State to increase its support for ODA – currently standing at its lowest percentage level in 17 years — and to ratify global agreements and take all necessary local actions to remove tax avoidance schemes in Ireland.
Assistant Professor in Development Practice in Trinity’s School of Natural Sciences, Susan Murphy, said: “This event provided much needed space and scope for critical and constructive engagement with the emerging development paradigm entailed in the Sustainable Development 2030 Agenda.”
“Interest in working collaboratively to find solutions to address the complex global challenges we now face was evidence in the diverse multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral make-up of the audience which brought together researchers from 18 different universities in Ireland, UK, Europe, North America, South America, China, Brazil, Asia, and Canada; practitioners and experts from 10 Irish based Development NGOs; policy makers from International intergovernmental organizations and national government ministries; as well as general members of the public with a keen interest in sustainable development theory and practice.”