Video
ReCom results meeting: Aid and Our Changing Environment - Part I

At the 4 June Stockholm ReCom results meeting renowned researchers, academics and politicians from the Global South and North, as well as high profile policy makers from donor recipient countries reflected on global trends in the “greening” of aid and lessons learned in past successes and failures of development cooperation.

Why pour aid money into the environment when the world´s poorest still struggle to survive?

Aid institutions and agencies were largely designed in a context where the vast majority of the world’s poorest people were living in the world’s poorest countries and where low and middle income countries both contributed to and suffered relatively little from global environmental problems.  However, times are changing.

Today, the majority of the world’s 1.3 billion poorest live in fast growing middle income countries, which are major contributors to and frequently first in line to suffer from global environmental problems. Research now shows that to ensure foreign aid reaches the world´s poorest, governments must simultaneously confront the interlinked challenges of human development and global environmental change.

An interactive ‘Results Meeting’

At the 4 June Stockholm ReCom results meeting renowned researchers, academics and politicians from the Global South and North, as well as high profile policy makers from donor recipient countries reflected on global trends in the “greening” of aid and lessons learned in past successes and failures of development cooperation.

Experts presented findings on the need to increase aid to middle income countries whilst using aid as a catalyst to support appropriate policies and institutional innovations that work.  Experts also discussed how continued and enhanced provision of global/regional public goods such as agriculture and the financing of efforts to mitigate environmental issues figure into the future role of aid in our changing environment.

 

PART I: Research results – what do we know?

Welcome and introduction

Bo Netz, Sida
Finn Tarp, UNU-WIDER

The greening of aid

Chris Marcoux, DePauw University
     - Global perspective

Eseza Katerega, Makerere University
     - Case studies in Africa

Q&A The greening of aid
Michael Tierney, The College of William and Mary
Chris Marcoux, DePauw University
Eseza Katerega, Makerere University

Institutional innovations: what has worked and what could work?

Yannick Glemarec, UN Multi-Donor Trust Funds
     - Global environment facility

Arild Angelsen, Norwegian University of Life Science
     - REDD++

Q&A Institutional innovations: what has worked and what could work?

Land use: how to cope in the 21st century?

Ephraim Nkonya, the International Food Policy Research Institute
     - Sustainable land use in Africa

Thomas Hertel, Purdue University
     - Aid, international institutions, and global land use

Q&A Land use: how to cope in the 21st century?

Achieving environmental goals in developing countries

Helle Munk Ravnborg, Danish Institute for International Studies
     - Environmental governance and development co-operation

Q&A Achieving environmental goals in developing countries

African energy future

Mafalda Duarte, African Development Bank

Yannick Glemarec, UN Multi-Donor Trust Funds

Q&A African energy future