Corruption: Debate with Danny Kaufmann

The audio is available on the Development Drums link: http://developmentdrums.org/284 shown above The transcript can be downloaded in the pdf file

Finding frames: new ways to engage the UK public in global poverty

The aim of the study was to explore the potential for frames theory to be used as a practical tool to re-engage the UK public in global poverty. In exploring the uses of frames theory, we have built on work by Tom Crompton at WWF-UK, who began the task of linking values to frames and thereby suggesting new ways forward for engaging the public in environmental issues and actions. An important finding from his Common Cause paper is that there is a common set of values that can motivate people to tackle a range of ‘bigger than self’ problems, including the environment and global poverty. The implication is that large coalitions can – and must – be built across third- sector organisations to bring about a values change in society. This report responds to that call. The basic argument of this paper is that there is a problem in terms of the UK public’s levels of engagement with global poverty. Simply put, people in the UK understand and relate to global poverty no differently now than they did in the 1980s. This is the case despite massive campaigns such as the Jubilee 2000 debt initiative and Make Poverty History; the widespread adoption and mainstreaming of digital communication techniques and social networks; steady growth in NGO fundraising revenues; the entire Millennium Development Goal story; and the establishment of a Westminster consensus on core elements of development policy. By many measures we have made amazing strides forward in recent years, but the public have largely been left behind. The result is that we operate within social and, by extension, political conditions that are precarious in the immediate term and incommensurate to the challenges of poverty and climate change in the medium and long term. This study looks at what can be learned from values (the guiding principles that individuals use to judge situations and determine their courses of action) and frames (the chunks of factual and procedural knowledge in the mind with which we understand situations, ideas and discourses in everyday life). Values and frames offer ways to look at the problem of public engagement with global poverty and to identify possible solutions. If we apply values and frames theory to the question of how to re-engage the public, we come up with some compelling insights into the impact of our existing practices and some striking solutions to the problems that these reveal. They may not be perfect solutions, and they bring with them significant challenges. But we believe they offer something valuable and timely: a fresh perspective. The persistent problem of public engagement suggests it is time for the development sector to transform its practices radically. Values and frames offer pathways to potential solutions that should be debated across the sector, and no

Soil Governance: Accessing Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives

Soil provides the foundation for agricultural and environmental systems, and are subject to a complex governance regime of property rights and secondary impacts from industry and domestic land use. Complex natural resource management issues require approaches to governance that acknowledge uncertainty and complexity. Theories of next generation environmental governance assume that inclusion of diverse perspectives will improve reform directions and encourage behaviour change. This paper reports on a qualitative survey of an international workshop that brought together cross-disciplinary perspectives to address the challenges of soil governance. Results reveal the challenges of communicating effectively across disciplines. The findings suggest that strategies for improved soils governance must focus on increasing communications with community stakeholders and engaging land managers in designing shared governance regimes. The need for more conscious articulation of the challenges of cross-disciplinary environments is discussed and strategies for increasing research collaboration in soils governance are suggested. The identified need for more systematic approaches to cross-disciplinary learning, including reporting back of cross-disciplinary initiatives to help practitioners learn from past experience, forms part of the rationale for this paper

Conservation and crime convergence? Situating the 2018 London Illegal Wildlife Trade Conference

The 2018 London Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) Conference was the fourth and biggest meeting on IWT convened at the initiative of the UK Government. Using a collaborative event ethnography, we examine the Conference as a site where key actors defined the problem of IWT as one of serious crime that needs to be addressed as such. We ask (a) how was IWT framed as serious crime, (b) how was this framing mobilized to promote particular policy responses, and (c) how did the framing and suggested responses reflect the privileging of elite voices? Answering these questions demonstrates the expanding ways in which thinking related to crime and policing are an increasingly forceful dynamic shaping conservation-related policy at the global level. We argue that the conservation-crime convergence on display at the 2018 London IWT Conference is characteristic of a conservation policy landscape that increasingly promotes and privileges responses to IWT that are based on legal and judicial reform, criminal investigations, intelligence gathering, and law enforcement technologies. Marginalized are those voices that seek to address the underlying drivers of IWT by promoting solutions rooted in sustainable livelihoods in source countries and global demand reduction. We suggest that political ecology of conservation and environmental crime would benefit from greater engagement with critical criminology, a discipline that critically interrogates the uneven power dynamics that shape ideas of crime, criminality, how they are politicized, and how they frame policy decisions. This would add further conceptual rigor to political ecological work that deconstructs conservation and environmental crime

New crimes – new tactics: the emergence and effectiveness of disruption in tackling serious organised crime

Whilst the encouragement to use disruption techniques in tackling organised crime has emerged in government and law enforcment rhetoric, little is known about its importance. This study examines how two UK police forces use a disruption approach to target 100 organised crime suspects. The findings show that a disruption approach offers a more dynamic and flexible approach, when compared with traditional prosecution and is popular with practitioners. However further research is needed to understand the most effective method of delivery and the level of impact the approach can bring

Disjointed Service: An English Case Study of Multi-Agency Provision in Tackling Child Trafficking

This paper examines the issue of child trafficking in the United Kingdom and of multi-agency responses in tackling it. The UK, as a signatory to the recent trafficking protocols, is required to implement measures to identify and support potential victims of trafficking - via the National Referral Mechanism. Effective support for child victims is reliant on cooperation between agencies. Our regional case-study contends that fragmented agency understandings of protocols and disjointed partnership approaches in service delivery means the trafficking of vulnerable children continues across the region. This paper asserts that child-trafficking in the UK, previously viewed as an isolated localised phenomenon, maybe far more widespread, revealing deficiencies in child protection services for vulnerable children

Budget support and policy/political dialogue : Donor practices in handling (political) crises

Budget support entered the aid scene at the turn of the millennium and it is considered as the aid modality par excellence to foster ownership and more effective aid through institutional reform. In 2008-2009 a number of political events in aid receiving African countries however pointed at the difficult relation between budget support and (political) governance. The paper analyzes donor policies and practices surrounding policy/political dialogue and budget support and offers a number of policy recommendations on where and how to deal with “political” issues. Based on a desk study carried in March-May 2010 at the request of the Belgian Directorate-General for Development Cooperation, the paper presents a substantial analysis of Mozambique and Zambia where two recent political crises were successfully resolved by five donor countries. The authors argue that using budget support to drive both democratic and economic change is hazardous. Acknowledging the synergy between policy and political dialogue, the paper posits that technocratic and democratic issues should be separated because there are obvious trade-offs between them. Democratic governance issues should be dealt with in a separate high level forum, and in a pro-active rather than reactive way. In addition, donors need to ensure their interventions do not undermine recipient countries efforts to democratize. In effect, they should lower their ambitions: 1) with regard to what they can do: change cannot be bought, it can only be supported; 2) with regard to what recipient governments can do: even when there is commitment, change is most often gradual, not in big leaps. If anything, politics and political savvy should be brought in more, because every reform (however technocratic) is profoundly political.