A Guide to the Framework and Database: New Report and Video

05 October 2011

The One World Trust has produced two new accompaniments to the database. The first is a written report: Accountability principles for policy oriented research organisations:A guide to the framework and online database. The report sets out the accountability framework for policy oriented research organisations, and provides a practical access guide to the database.

The second is a video guide to the database, which also provides background to the wider research project together with a visual walk-through of the website.

The Share Fair Initiative: Knowledge Sharing for Development

21 October 2010

Research and innovations thrives on effective knowledge communication. In a world increasingly espousing online, virtual interconnection, we cannot afford to forget the value of traditional forms of human interaction.

One such example is the Share Fair initiative: a series of events designed to bring together a range of stakeholders to share knowledge and learn from each other. This week sees the initiative reaching Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (18-21 October 2010). It seeks to foster agricultural and rural development knowledge in Africa through bringing together actors such as Farmer organizations, extensionists, researchers, students, academia, policy shapers, information and communication specialists, commercial advisors and input providers, and governments.

For more information on the Share Fair visit http://www.sharefair.net/

Knowledge Brokers’ Forum Launched

04 October 2010

The Knowledge Brokers’ Forum (KBF) was recently launched. It is a collaborative space to promote knowledge sharing and dissemination around intermediary work in international development. It aims to identify and contribute to effective strategies for accessing and using research to support social change.

For more information go to http://www.knowledgebrokersforum.org/

Overview of Outcome Mapping and Fusion with Logframe Analyses

17 September 2010

Simon Hearn and Jan van Ongevalle from the Outcome Mapping community have recently produced an overview of the community discussion on principles of outcome mapping and the opportunities for fusion with the logframe approach. The summary is in a visual format, to help users to follow the different threads of discussion.

Research Makes the News: a new report from Panos

13 September 2010

Last month Panos London released a report – Research Makes the News: strengthening media engagement with research to influence policy– examining the relationship between research and the media.

In recent decades, the media has begun to play an important role in communicating policy ideas. These policy ideas are for the most part fuelled by research from a wide spectrum of actors – universities, advocacy groups, think tanks and other private sources.  However, according to the report, “the conditions under which the media engage with, and report on, research and evidence to influence policy debates and outcomes, and the factors that strengthen their capacity to do so in developing country contexts, remain relatively unexamined”. 

Drawing on available research and evidence from the field, the briefing finds that the political and institutional context, including the degree of representativeness of government and the vibrancy of civil society, is important to understanding the capacity of the media to generate public debate around research and evidence, and to influence policy outcomes. The following factors strengthen the capacity of the media to do so:

• the capacity of journalists to use research to create stories that capture the public’s interest and are related to existing and emerging policy-making agendas
• the capacity of researchers to produce policy-relevant research and to work with intermediaries to present such research in a way that the media can use
• the capacity of civil society activists to pick up policy-related research and drive public debate around it
  
• the strength of the relationships among these actors – journalists, civil society     activists and researchers – and their associated organisations, and the     degree of openness and trust among them.

Climate Finance Transparency Initiative Launced

13 September 2010

The Dutch Ministry of the Environment has launched a website aiming to collect and present details about climate finance pledges from developed countries.

The issues of climate change and transparency recently collided after researchers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit were found to have lacked sufficient openness following last year’s leaked email scandal.

The initiative gives much needed boost to transparency in the field of climate change research, where it is increasingly becoming clear that vast sums are needed to assist actors across the globe, especially in the global South, adjust to a low carbon economy. Research and innovation is expected to play a central role in realising this future. The Development of the website, launched on the 2^nd September, was initiated by the government of the Netherlands, with support from the governments of Costa Rica, Colombia, Denmark, Germany, Indonesia, the Marshall Islands, Mexico, Norway, the United Kingdom and Vietnam.  It is hoped that, given time, the website will play a role in making the financing of climate research and innovation more open.

Reflexive Monitoring and Action: handbook to monitoring tool

10 September 2010

A team from Wageningen University have released a handbook on a new monitoring tool entitled “Reflexive Monitoring and Action” for those seeking “to realise the far-reaching ambitions of system innovation”. With an innovative and well-considered set of tools and processes, the guidebook allows an organisation to build a robust system of reflexion and learning, incorporating repeated feedback loops, aimed at ensuring that learning will overcome problems as they arise and in good time. (See here for tool listing.)

FAO data repository now online

19 August 2010

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has granted free access to its central data repository dating back to 1961. FAOSTAT is the worlds largest resource of data on food, agriculture, and hunger and includes

• data on agricultural and food production,
• usage of fertilizers and pesticides,
• food aid shipments, food balance sheets,
• forestry and fisheries production,
• irrigation and water use,
• land use,
• population trends,
• trade in agricultural products,
• the use of agricultural machinery,
• and more.

Anyone can access the data in English, French or Spanish.

The right to a say and the duty to respond

19 August 2010

The Human Accountability Project (HAP) has launched a new report that aims to examine the progress of the 2007 HAP Standard in Complaint and Response Mechanisms (CRM).

CRMs have received significant attention in recent years and are recognised as an integral requirement for all organisations seeking to improve accountability to their stakeholders. The new report – “The right to a say and the duty to respond” – aims to address three research questions:

What impact have CRMs had on the lives of disaster-affected populations?
What impact have CRMs had on the agency’s staff and other relevant stakeholders?
What impact has the introduction of CRMs had on the management (from programme development, to implementation to monitoring and evaluation) of humanitarian programmes?

Although the report focuses upon the humanitarian sector, learnings are pertinent to all organisations involved in establishing and maintaining CRMs.

Amongst its conclusions it found that it is imperative that CRMs work in unison with good management systems; that staff embody respect in their attitudes and behaviours towards beneficiaries, and there is complete respect for cultural and linguistic concerns in each environment. It was also said that there is a danger of CRMs reinforcing community power imbalances through giving unequal voice to privileged community leaders.