How can the Financial Sector Better Serve People and the Planet? The Need to Reimagine Finance

This article analyses two events in 2010, which attempted to reimagine the role of the financial sector in promoting international development. Several strategies for reimagining are identified and described, and mutually reinforcing barriers to reimagining are outlined. The challenges for moving from ideas to action are particularly difficult for a sector that is often impenetrable to those outside of it. The global nature of the sector is also key to the challenge of reimagining, whether proponents for change are inside or outside of it

Using the Financial Crisis to Reimagine the Private Sector

This article uses a workshop, organised by the think tank, Tomorrow's Company, to explore attempts to reimagine the role of business in development. In trying to envisage new ways of working between businesses and INGOs, workshop participants grappled with the tension between abstract thinking and the need to be practical and tangible. The challenges of imagining new ways of working together are highlighted in this article. Ultimately, it is the failure to visualise how change happens in a macro?setting that is seen as the key stumbling block to progress

Reimagining Aid for the Next Ten Years: What do Donors Think?

This article reports on a workshop facilitated by IDS for representatives of six European development donor agencies. The aim was to create some space for reflection on how aid agencies will need to adapt to, and influence, the changes in the external environment over the next ten years. We identified three key aims for development assistance: narrow national interest, the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and sustainable global management. The trade?offs and overlaps between these three aims were explored and their implications for the approach, form, capacities and accountabilities of future development agencies were outlined. The authors observed that the space for reflection was much valued by the participants, and argue that the existence of these spaces will come under increased pressure if the results agenda is not sufficiently innovative

Advancing the application of systems thinking in health: managing rural China health system development in complex and dynamic contexts

Background: This paper explores the evolution of schemes for rural finance in China as a case study of the long and complex process of health system development. It argues that the evolution of these schemes has been the outcome of the response of a large number of agents to a rapidly changing context and of efforts by the government to influence this adaptation process and achieve public health goals. Methods:The study draws on several sources of data including a review of official policy documents and academic papers and in-depth interviews with key policy actors at national level and at a sample of localities. Results: The study identifies three major transition points associated with changes in broad development strategy and demonstrates how the adaptation of large numbers of actors to these contextual changes had a major impact on the performance of the health system. Further, it documents how the Ministry of Health viewed its role as both an advocate for the interests of health facilities and health workers and as the agency responsible for ensuring that government health system objectives were met. It is argued that a major reason for the resilience of the health system and its ability to adapt to rapid economic and institutional change was the ability of the Ministry to provide overall strategy leadership. Additionally, it postulates that a number of interest groups have emerged, which now also seek to influence the pathway of health system development. Conclusions: This history illustrates the complex and political nature of the management of health system development and reform. The paper concludes that governments will need to increase their capacity to analyze the health sector as a complex system and to manage change processes.UKaid: DFI

The Role of Music in the Transition Towards a Culture of Sustainability

Music has a critical role to play in the transition towards a culture of sustainability. Music is essential to human survival and human development. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not an ‘add on;’ instead, it is the life-blood of culture and individual and collective identity and strengthens our bio-culture.  Participatory music, in particular, may play a critical role in enabling human survival to climate change. Its ability to draw upon and illicit deep levels of both verbal and non-verbal imagery, symbols, emotions and social-knowledge-structures make it a vitalizing element for our current journey towards sustainability. Renewing our bio-culture is essential to connecting and living well together. To empower sustainability, we – researchers, program managers, activists, engineers, and others engaged with practical sustain-abilities – need to actively create music as an integral component of those practices from which a sustainable culture can emerge.This paper first lifts up some of the rapidly growing literature concerning the cultural shift necessary to survive climate change and the role that art and music play in culture.  I then offer a case study from my own work in creating music to empower sustainability and my reflections and lessons learned from this experience.  Finally, based on the theoretical framework and my own experience, I encourage sustainability practitioners to engage in experiments with participatory music

The Role of Music in the Transition Towards a Culture of Sustainability

Music has a critical role to play in the transition towards a culture of sustainability. Music is essential to human survival and human development. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not an ‘add on;’ instead, it is the life-blood of culture and individual and collective identity and strengthens our bio-culture.  Participatory music, in particular, may play a critical role in enabling human survival to climate change. Its ability to draw upon and illicit deep levels of both verbal and non-verbal imagery, symbols, emotions and social-knowledge-structures make it a vitalizing element for our current journey towards sustainability. Renewing our bio-culture is essential to connecting and living well together. To empower sustainability, we – researchers, program managers, activists, engineers, and others engaged with practical sustain-abilities – need to actively create music as an integral component of those practices from which a sustainable culture can emerge.This paper first lifts up some of the rapidly growing literature concerning the cultural shift necessary to survive climate change and the role that art and music play in culture.  I then offer a case study from my own work in creating music to empower sustainability and my reflections and lessons learned from this experience.  Finally, based on the theoretical framework and my own experience, I encourage sustainability practitioners to engage in experiments with participatory music