Development Roast Giving international development a proper roasting

Many economic mechanisms have been put forward to try to better manage natural resources. The UN Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD), for example, aims to put a financial value on the carbon stored in rainforests and incentivise developing countries to maintain them. Other systems in place give …

August has been an exciting month for INESAD. We finally managed to fully convert the Institute into a Bolivian non-profit foundation, Fundación INESAD, with all the advantages (and a few disadvantages) that this implies. This was a requirement for receiving support from the Canadian Think Tank Initiative, but also a …

The Bolivian government has taken a strong stance against the international REDD+ mechanism, mainly because it reduces forests to a simple commodity to be traded in international carbon emissions markets. This would not only imply trading an invisible product (CO2 emissions), but – even more complicated – trading the lack …

INESAD’s Ioulia Fenton is currently researching food and agriculture topics at Worldwatch Institutes‘ Nourishing the Planet project (NtP). Check out her latest article that was featured on the NtP website: Five Holistic Alternative Farming Methods: Agroecology at its Best In March 2011, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Olivier De Schutter, …

By Grahame Russel Increasingly, over the past few years, information has been published about serious human rights violations and health and environmental harms being caused in Guatemala by (mainly) Canadian mining company operations: Goldcorp Inc., Radius Gold Inc., Tahoe Resources Inc., Hudbay Minerals, and others. It is not possible to …

By: Diana Weinhold* Policies designed with the intention of making employment more secure tend to make employment less secure. Policies implemented to ensure that the poor can obtain housing often reduce residential options for low income families. Again and again, we observe that policy intentions and consequences are, at best, …

By: Lykke E. Andersen* The Bolivian government has taken a strong stance against the international REDD+ mechanism, mainly because it reduces forests to a simple commodity to be traded in international carbon emissions markets. This would not only imply trading an invisible product (CO2 emissions), but – even more complicated …

By: Lykke E. Andersen* “Nature is like love: one of the most beautiful things on earth, but if you put a price on it, it becomes prostitution.” Nele Marien Every time somebody converts a hectare of forest into a hectare of agricultural land, they have – implicitly or explicitly – …

By: Charles Palmer* Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+), if implemented and financed on a broad scale in numerous countries across the world, promises to revolutionise forest and conservation policy. Yet, there remains much uncertainty regarding long-term finance and the mechanisms by which it might be delivered. Uncertainty also …

By: Juan Carlos Ledezma* In the year of 1971, the Regional Corporation for Development in La Paz Region (CORDEPAZ) was created. It’s main development proposal, with the name “March towards the North”, put forward three different production strategies: i) the creation of a regional development hotspot centered in the San …