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Tag: Project: GPCR

Announcements

Global Poverty Consensus Report Published

The Global Poverty Consensus Report (GPCR) is a joint project between ASAP and the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP). It aims to highlight the existing academic consensus on the causes and remedies for global poverty. Based on thirty-nine interviews done by Gilad Tanay in 2012, the analysis was written by Alberto Cimadamore and Lynda Lange. The final report is now available for download. More information on the project is available here.

Announcements

Why Join ASAP?

In this article, we outline reasons why researchers and teachers should want to join Academics Stand Against Poverty, and we discuss the kinds of impact gains that might be realized through collaboration in the ASAP network.

Announcements

ASAP researchers identify 1,400+ academics to be surveyed about poverty consensus report

The conclusions of the Global Poverty Consensus Report (GPCR), an ASAP effort to identify academic consensus on priorities for poverty alleviation, will soon be tested. ASAP board members Gilad Tanay and Keith Horton are working with a small research team to analyze the results of fifty interviews with academics on poverty-alleviation policy post-2015. In the coming months, they hope to produce a map of areas of agreement and disagreement on policy priorities for the development framework that will succeed the Millennium Development Goals after 2015.

The conclusions Horton and Tanay draw will be tested in a survey of academics who have published on topics related to global poverty.

David Rodríguez-Arias, a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Spanish National Research Council, led the effort to create a comprehensive database of academics around the world who have published peer-reviewed papers on global poverty in the last three decades. He and his team of volunteer researchers managed to gather basic data and contact information for 1,429 different academics who had published on topics relevant to the GPCR.

Rodríguez-Arias sees an urgent need for the GPCR effort. \”Within the academic field of global justice,\” he said, \”too much focus on disagreement sends the misguided and potentially paralyzing message to the society that a common agenda for global poverty eradication cannot be defined. Academic experts in global poverty need to be consulted when policy makers define sound and effective policies. In that respect, this is a very important moment: the Millennium Development Goals are about to expire, and the post MDG framework is being defined. Any academic consensus on what the Beyond 2015 agenda should look like can achieve a considerable positive impact for the face of global poverty during the 21th century.\”

Rodríguez-Arias and Tanay identified six academic disciplines that are highly relevant to the field of global poverty: social science, economy, political science, philosophy, public health and environmental studies. For each of these disciplines, Rodriguez-Arias searched a prominent bibliographic database for papers on the Millennium Development Goals, global poverty, and development policy. Volunteer researchers Janina Pescinski, Mario Ascolese, Amy Wood, Beatriz Carrillo, Iason Gabriel, and Gulrez Azhar turned this long list of publications into a database, complete with authors’ names, affiliation, location, and contact information.

Pescinski described the process as being \”as broadly inclusive as possible, from disciplines to geography\”. She said \”it was especially difficult to find contact info for non-
Northern or non-English speaking scholars, but I think this speaks to many of the inequalities ASAP targets\”.

Ascolese had not expected they would identify so many academics writing on the topic of global poverty and development. \”It was stunning and encouraging,\” he said. \”It means that many efforts already exist to promote change in academia, and that maybe a project aiming at coordinating these efforts can be useful\”.

Announcements

GPCR Team Has Conducted More Than 50 Interviews With Poverty Experts

The Global Poverty Consensus Report project aims to identify and clearly articulate academic consensus and disagreement on global poverty alleviation and to feed these points of consensus into the MDG replacement process. To date, the team has interviewed more than 50 poverty researchers, with more to come. They are particularly concerned at the moment with interviewing academics from the Global South. The interviews are currently being transcribed. Once the interview phase is completed, the team will write a report highlighting the major recommendations for development policy post-2015. Next, they will test the consensus identified in the report, circulating a survey amongst academics who have written on the MDGs and MDG successors. Finally, they will organize consultation meetings with impoverished communities on three continents to present the report and get feedback on its key policy proposals.

Announcements

Introducing ASAP’s Quick Response and Campaign Coordination Teams

Two new groups of ASAP volunteers — the Quick Response Team and Campaign Coordination Team — will work together to provide research, consultation, and other support services to Beyond 2015.

Beyond 2015 is a global coalition of more than 500 civil society organisations from over 80 countries calling for a strong and legitimate development framework to succeed the UN Millennium Development Goals, which are due to expire in 2015. Beyond 2015 is working closely with the UN to ensure that its work on the post-2015 development framework is inclusive, participatory, and responsive to the voices of people living in poverty. The High Level Panel appointed to advise the UN General Assembly regards Beyond 2015 as a key source of civil society input in the MDG replacement process.

ASAP is well placed to contribute research and consultation to Beyond 2015 because two ASAP projects, the Global Poverty Consensus Report and the Institutional Reform Goals, focus on co-ordinating academics\’ research and recommendations for the MDG successors. Beyond 2015 has recognised ASAP as a leading source of academic knowledge concerning poverty alleviation and other development goals.

In order to provide Beyond 2015 with the best academic input possible, ASAP has recruited volunteers from around the world to form the Quick Response Team and the Campaign Coordination Team.

The Quick Response Team consists of 25 academics who specialize in poverty alleviation from diverse disciplines, including philosophy, political science, social science, economics, international business, environmental management, medicine, and other fields. Team members are based in a wide range of countries, including Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. The diversity of the Quick Response Team leads to rich interdisciplinary analysis and research on questions concerning poverty alleviation. Specifically, the Quick Response Team offers the following services:

  1. Providing research-informed responses to urgent questions from Beyond 2015.
  2. Fact checking position papers written by Beyond 2015 member groups.
  3. Translating Beyond 2015 materials into other languages.
  4. Identifying academics who are conducting leading research on poverty alleviation and international development.

The Campaign Coordination Team consists of four members who are responsible for liaising between ASAP, the Quick Response Team, and Beyond 2015, and for coordinating the efforts of these groups. Specifically, the Campaign Coordination Team recruits academics from the Quick Response Team to contribute to Beyond 2015 policy briefs, delegates research tasks amongst the Quick Response Team, and synthesizes research findings.

To date, the Quick Response and Campaign Coordination Teams have worked together to provide substantive academic feedback on several Beyond 2015 policy briefs, spanning the themes of Health, Food Security and Nutrition, and Environmental Sustainability. The two teams are also collaborating to compile a list of potential contributors to the Global Poverty Consensus Report who represent a variety of nations and academic disciplines.

The development of the Quick Response and Campaign Coordination Teams marks a pivotal step for ASAP\’s work in facilitating discussion between civil society and academic researchers, and in providing an avenue for academics to engage in poverty-alleviation activism and contribute directly to the efforts to eradicate global poverty.

For more information on the Quick Response Team, please contact Brent Peterkin at brentpeterkin@gmail.com.

For more information on the Campaign Coordination Team, please contact Erin Schutte at erin.schutte@yale.edu or Monica Landy at monica.landy@yale.edu.

Announcements

Global Experts on Participation Join ASAP Team Promoting Inclusion in post-MDG Consultations

Some of the world\’s most prominent scholars of participatory governance and development have joined an ASAP team formed to help ensure an inclusive process in the development of replacement measures for the Millennium Development Goals.

The United Nations is holding a series of thematic consultations with academia, media, private sector, employers and trade unions, civil society and decision makers on the post-MDG development agenda. These meetings are likely to have a great impact on the new framework of international goals that will succeed the MDGs after 2015.

It is crucial that the voices of the global poor are well-represented in these consultations. Towards that end, ASAP, in collaboration with the Beyond 2015 coalition, has formed a team of experts on participatory consultation that will work to ensure that representatives of the global poor our meaningfully engaged in the upcoming UN meetings.

The team:

  • Elizabeth Anderson, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Rawls Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Womens Studies at the University of Michigan
  • Seyla Benhabib, Eugene Mayer Professor of Philosophy and Political Science and Director of the Program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics at Yale University.
  • Simon Burall, Director of Involve
  • Lyn Carson, Fellow at the Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy at the University of Western Sydney, Australia
  • John Dryzek, Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University and Australian Research Council Federation Fellow
  • Meena Krishnamurthy, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Associate Director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of Manitoba
  • Charles Sabel, Maurice T. Moore Professor of Law and Social Science at Columbia Law School
  • Gilad Tanay, Ph.D. Candidate, Yale University
  • Catarina Tully, Director of From Over Here
  • Scott Wisor, Research Fellow in the Centre for Moral, Social, and Political Theory in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University

For more information about this project contact Gilad Tanay (gilad.tanay@yale.edu) or Meena Krishnamurthy (meena.krishnamurthy@gmail.com).

Announcements

ASAP provides background brief for post-MDG consultation

ASAP provided a background brief titled \”After 2015: What Do We Know? Where Do We Go From Here?\” to participants in a civil society dialogue on the MDG successors, held in London on November 1 and 2. The event was organized to allow civil society groups to present proposals the High Level of Eminent Persons, appointed to advise the United Nations General Assembly on the contents of the development framework that will succeed the MDGs in 2015. Prior to the meeting, the High Level Panel published a list of six discussion questions to guide the meeting, addressing themes like jobs and livelihoods, inequality, inclusive growth, and ecologically fragile areas. ASAP responded to these six questions and laid out four principles that should underlie the post-2015 framework.

ASAP\’s background brief is available for download.

Openings

Call for Volunteers: UN Consultation on MDG Successors

The Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, expire in 2015, and the policy framework that replaces them will likely shape global priorities for human development and poverty alleviation for the next two decades. ASAP is offering opportunities for its members to contribute research, coordination, and policy analysis to the largest civil society campaign seeking to influence the post-MDG framework.

Because of our work on the Global Poverty Consensus Report, our effort to identify consensus amongst academics on what should succeed the MDGs and communicate that position to decision makers in the UN policy process, ASAP has been asked to provide research and consultation to Beyond 2015. Beyond 2015 is a global coalition of more than 380 NGOs building a policy platform on poverty alleviation post-2015, making it the largest civil society organization active on the MDG successors.

In order to provide Beyond 2015 with the best academic input possible, ASAP is forming three teams of member volunteers:

  1. The Academic Quick Response Team, which will provide research support to Beyond 2015 and fact check position papers from coalition members.
  2. The Campaign Coordination Team, which will solicit and synthesize policy recommendations from development experts and civil society leaders, to be incorporated into ASAP and Beyond 2015\’s platform on development after the MDGs.
  3. The Expert Working Group on Participatory Consultation, which will write an alternative agenda for the UNDP\’s thematic consultation with civil society on governance and accountability issues–an agenda that is more open and less presumptive than that put forward by the UNDP.

We are currently recruiting for the Academic Quick Response and Campaign Coordination Teams.

Members with expertise in participatory consultation, international development, public policy, or international law should consider volunteering for the Academic Quick Response Team. Those with experience in organizational leadership, project management, grassroots campaigns, marketing, and communications are encouraged to volunteer for the Campaign Coordination Team.

If you would like to get involved, please complete this short form describing your skills and experience by Wednesday, October 17. We will follow up with details on how you can get involved.

For additional information, please contact Rachel Payne (rachel@academicsstand.org).

EVENTS

The Millennium Development Goals and Beyond: Virtual Roundtable with Branko Milanovic, Gus Ranis, Varun Gauri and Thomas Pogge

This \’virtual roundtable\’ features interviews with four prominent commentators on development and global poverty:

Varun Gauri is a Senior Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank; Branko Milanovic is a lead economist in the World Bank’s Research Department; Thomas Pogge is Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University; Gustav Ranis is the Frank Altschul Professor Emeritus of International Economics at Yale University

Interviews by Gilad Tanay

Announcements

ASAP Joins Beyond 2015\’s Committee on Governance and Accountability

Beyond 2015 is a coalition of 380+ CSOs which is seeking to create a civil society consensus around a minimum standard of legitimacy for a post-2015 framework, both in terms of the process and the framework itself.

ASAP has been invited to join Beyond 2015\’s committee developing a position paper on governance and accountability for the post-MDG consultation process. This paper will be presented at the UNDP\’s thematic consultation meeting on governance and accountability to take place in Johannesburg early next year.

Board member Gilad Tanay (Yale) will represent ASAP in the committee. For further information or to provide your input on the process contact Gilad Tanay at gilad.tanay@yale.edu.

For more details on ASAP\’s work on the post-MDG issue see the Global Poverty Consensus Report.