Facilitating Humanitarian Access to Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Innovation

Calls for intellectual property licensing strategies in the pharmaceutical and agricultural sectors that promote humanitarian access to product innovations for the benefit of the disadvantaged. Includes profiles of successful and promising strategies

Ahead of the Curve: Insights for the International NGO of the Future

International NGOs have a unique and important role to play in addressing today's complex global challenges. But few of them are living up to their full potential. With support from the Hewlett Foundation, FSG researched how the most innovative INGOs are adapting to the disruptions in the global development sector and embracing four approaches to create greater impact

Intellectual Property Management in Health and Agricultural Innovation: Executive Guide

Prepared by and for policy-makers, leaders of public sector research establishments, technology transfer professionals, licensing executives, and scientists, this online resource offers up-to-date information and strategies for utilizing the power of both intellectual property and the public domain. Emphasis is placed on advancing innovation in health and agriculture, though many of the principles outlined here are broadly applicable across technology fields. Eschewing ideological debates and general proclamations, the authors always keep their eye on the practical side of IP management. The site is based on a comprehensive Handbook and Executive Guide that provide substantive discussions and analysis of the opportunities awaiting anyone in the field who wants to put intellectual property to work. This multi-volume work contains 153 chapters on a full range of IP topics and over 50 case studies, composed by over 200 authors from North, South, East, and West. If you are a policymaker, a senior administrator, a technology transfer manager, or a scientist, we invite you to use the companion site guide available at http://www.iphandbook.org/index.html The site guide distills the key points of each IP topic covered by the Handbook into simple language and places it in the context of evolving best practices specific to your professional role within the overall picture of IP management

ACCESS: An Inception Report

Imagine a world in which all groups of citizens coming together to realize some public benefit measure and communicate the character and consequences of their work. Imagine further that all those groups have adopted a common reporting system that enables their individual reports to be compared, thus creating powerful descriptions of the relative and collective performance of citizen association for public benefit. Imagine, too, that this common measuring and reporting carries across to all forms of public-private partnership and corporate social responsibility. This is the world envisioned by ACCESS.For the past 18 months a growing number of concerned actors have been meeting, studying, and testing opinion around one of the great structural weaknesses in the world's institutional infrastructure -- inefficient and weak social investment markets. This inception report sets out the results of this enquiry in the form of a proposal to establish a reporting standard for nonprofit organizations seeking to produce social, environmental and, increasingly, financial returns. The ACCESS Reporting standard is one important contribution to redressing a major global system weakness, but it is certainly not the only one. Nor is it one that can operate in isolation from other initiatives. Accordingly, the ACCESS proposed plan of work involves convening a global dialogue on NGO transparency, accountability and performance with the objective of promoting ACCESS and other practical solutions to the challenges of social investment and civil society accountability.This report sets out the background and rationale for these proposals. You will meet the ACCESS sponsors and pilot project partners. Parts of the report are descriptive and analytical but other parts are necessarily theoretical and technical in nature. We make no apology for this. Part of the reason that in 2003 the world does not yet have a reporting standard for social actors is that the theory and technique have not been mastered. For those with a strong orientation toward strategy and action, however, these aspects are presented as well

Shaping globalization for poverty alleviation and food security:

CONTENTS: Brief 1. Introduction / Eugenio Díaz-Bonilla and Sherman Robinson Brief 2. The Nature of Disagreements / Ravi Kanbur Brief 3. Growth and Poverty / Manohar Sharma, Sam Morley, and Eugenio Díaz-Bonilla Brief 4. Trade and Food Security / Eugenio Díaz-Bonilla and Marcelle Thomas Brief 5. Nutrition / Julie Babinard and Per Pinstrup-Andersen Brief 6. High-Value Agriculture / Christopher Delgado, Nicholas Minot, and Nikolas Wada Brief 7. Food Safety and Food Quality / Laurian J. Unnevehr Brief 8. Technological Change / Peter B. R. Hazell Brief 9. Intellectual Property Rights and Agricultural R&D / Philip G. Pardey and Brian D. Wright Brief 10. Environment / Stanley Wood Brief 11. Democracy and Civil Society / Marzia Fontana and Yukitsugu Yanoma Brief 12. Conflict and Food Insecurity / Ellen Messer and Marc J. Cohen Brief 13. Governments and Public Policy / Eugenio Díaz-Bonilla and Sherman RobinsonNutrition., Intellectual property., Conflict management., Food security., Poverty alleviation., Afghanistan., Globalization,

Philanthropy: Current Context - Issues, Actors and Instruments

This report attempts to provide an overview of philanthropy and the 'philanthropic ecosystem' that has evolved over the recent decade. Special focus of the report is on international development philanthropy. It is relatively broad in scope and aims to be of use for all practitioners in the fundraising and philanthropy field. However, it cannot claim to be exhaustive and to cover each one of the examined topics sufficiently. Its aim is to raise questions and provide a basis for discussion first and foremost.The special focus on international development philanthropy brings certain challenges with it, as it is a topic that is not easily summarised in a couple of bullet points and conflicting opinions are as present as in any discussion that deals with the interaction of the developed and developing world, and especially the emancipation of the developing world from the 'North'

Future multilateral cooperation with the DPRK: Food Security and agriculture

This report reviews the data on food security and agriculture in the DPRK. It investigates the meaning of the term ‘food security’ as understood by the DPRK government and the United Nations agencies working in the DPRK. The paper reviews the causes and condition of food insecurity in the DPRK. The paper charts the government’s responses to the food and economic crisis of the mid- 1990s, before evaluating food security in the DPRK in terms of aggregate national food availability as well as food accessibility by different social groups. The paper also notes the DPRK government’s new approach to moving towards a cooperation strategy with the international community based on development instead of relief. Building on this new approach, the paper proposes a set of recommendations designed to offer a multisectoral approach to reconstituting sustainable food security in the DPRK. In so doing, the paper offers suggestions for possible future multilateral cooperation in the context of food security as a policy goal for the DPRK

Beyond Rio+20: governance for a green economy

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Center Task Force Reports, a publication series that began publishing in 2009 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.As an intellectual contribution to the preparations for the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, a.k.a. Rio +20), the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future convened a task force of experts to discuss the role of institutions in the actualization of a green economy in the context of sustainable development. A stellar group of experts from academia, government and civil society convened at the Pardee Center and were asked to outline ideas about what the world has learned about institutions for sustainable development from the past, and what we can propose about the governance challenges and opportunities for the continuous development of a green economy in the future. The Task Force members were encouraged to think big and think bold. They were asked to be innovative in their ideas, and maybe even a little irreverent and provocative. They were charged specifically NOT to come to consensus about specific recommendations, but to present a variety and diversity of views. This report presents their thoughts and ideas

Vulnerability to Hunger: Improving Food Crisis Responses in Fragile States

The paper examines the imperative for improved classification and analysis of food crises in different fragile contexts. Recognizing the persistence and protracted nature of food crises, the paper questions how prevention and response mechanisms could be improved to help decisionmakers better address the underlying causes of vulnerability and hunger. The paper draws on case study information to examine real life opportunities and constraints in applying a recently developed food security classification system, named the analytical frameworks at country level, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). Developed originally in Somalia, this classification framework is now being applied in a range of country contexts within and outside of Africa by national governments, UN agencies, donors and NGO organizations. The paper draws on early applications of the IPC to consider opportunities and constraints in the application of common classification systems, taking into account issues of institutional adaptation, methodologies, data and analysis.food security, humanitarian assistance, complex emergencies

Conflict, food insecurity, and globalization:

"We explore how globalization, broadly conceived to include international humanrights norms, humanitarianism, and alternative trade, might influence peaceful and foodsecure outlooks and outcomes. The paper draws on our previous work on conflict as a cause and effect of hunger and also looks at agricultural exports as war commodities. We review studies on the relationships between (1) conflict and food insecurity, (2) conflict and globalization, and (3) globalization and food insecurity. Next, we analyze countrylevel, historical contexts where export crops, such as coffee and cotton, have been implicated in triggering and perpetuating conflict. These cases suggest that it is not export cropping per se, but production and trade structures and food and financial policy contexts that determine peaceful or belligerent outcomes. Export cropping appears to contribute to conflict when fluctuating prices destabilize household and national incomes and when revenues fund hostilities. Also, in these scenarios, governments have not taken steps to progressively realize the right to adequate food or to reduce hunger and poverty. We conclude by exploring implications for agricultural development, trade, and human rights policies." Authors' AbstractHunger, Conflict, war, Globalization, Crops, exports, coffee, Cotton, Human rights, Right to food, Fair trade,