Jon Lomøy has been appointed Director of the Development Co-operation Directorate of the OECD in April 2010. Read more...

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Since the 1990s, some donor countries have made part of their aid conditional on a set of policies, including economic liberalization, political liberalization and democratization. This triptych, which can be assembled under the heading of 'good governance', has also been promoted by multilateral financial institutions.

Today, because of the economic crisis, forceful criticism of this gamut of conditions is again being expressed in both North and South.

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Dear bloggers,

I would like to share with you some of the reflections of an article my colleague Olivier Ray and I just published in the Center for Global Development's working papers (accessible here), as they fit nicely in the mandate of this blog - i.e. 'sharing information, viewpoints and visions for the future with the common goal of advancing the cause of development'. In this piece we reflect on some of the changes taking place in the world of international development. We describe a transformation of official development assistance (ODA) into a global public policy whose objectives, instruments and actors are profoundly different from the ones that characterized development aid only ten to fifteen years ago.

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The link between human activity and climate change is established. There is uncertainty as to how exactly the physical processes that mediate between greenhouse gases emissions and changes to our planet's climate will unfold, but these processes are not easy to reverse, and may even be irreversible. Catastrophic effects are possible in the long-run and the more we wait the greater the risks.

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The debate was initiated at the European Development Days 2008 in Strasbourg and the discussion continues. Rendez-vous in Stockholm for the 2009's edition, and until then "To your keyboards"!

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The failure of the recent WTO Ministerial to achieve its objective of agreeing on modalities for negotiations in agriculture and NAMA is a setback for the Doha Round. The latest in a series of failed attempts, the breakdown of the July talks has led to concerns about the demise of the entire Round. A recent Financial Times editorial even coined the unfortunate but catchy phrase, "dead as a Doha".

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I come back from Kenya. AFD and other donors including the World Bank and EIB are financing a large-scale public geothermal investment program that will supply most of Kenya's future power generating capacity. The power generation mix that will fuel Kenya's rapidly growing economy over the next decade will be carbon-poor.

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For many years now, academics have debated whether regional trade agreements are 'building blocks' or 'stumbling blocks' for development and free trade. Regionalism has recently returned to the forefront of attention, as the slow progress in the Doha Round of negotiations has led many countries to increasingly pursue regional agendas.

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For those of us who work in the humanitarian world, the dawn of the twenty-first century has dealt us a difficult hand. As the expert practitioners in the game of preparing and planning for sudden, unpredictable events, we at the World Food Programme, the world's largest humanitarian agency, have become the recognised experts in emergency response.

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Refusing the fate of underdevelopment for the twenty-first century, the international community has given itself a series of eight ambitious targets to meet by 2015. They range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education.

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