Clear all

83 results found

reorder grid_view

Annual Report 2022: People at the Heart of Food Systems

June 6, 2023

Three years since the formation of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, our organization is emerging from a period of global and institutional change. The seeds that we sowed in 2019 – a fresh and ambitious set of Strategic Objectives to transform people's lives during a climate crisis – are now bearing fruit.What do establishing urban gardens (in Kenya), 'mining' cassava alleles (in Colombia), and delivering climate information services (in the Philippines) have in common? The answer is simple: communities, institutions, and people. Urban gardens empower vulnerable consumers to feed their families. Superior cassava traits guarantee farmers sufficient yield so they profit from each harvest. Climate information services provide farmers with forecasts while informing government policies and investments in disaster risk reduction.

Promoting Equitable and Inclusive Green Job Growth in Southeast Asia

May 15, 2023

The transition to a green economy offers a bright future for Southeast Asia. It's not only a US$1 trillion market opportunity by 2030 across the region's economies. It's also a pathway to a sustainable future, one that is resilient to the climate crisis, more secure for nations, healthier for residents, and inclusive for all.To guide this radical transformation, we studied employment markets across six countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam—and conducted 80 interviews with employers, researchers, and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). This report, supported by J.P. Morgan, identifies steps that leaders across sectors— governments, funders, NGOs, investors, and employers—can take to ensure the emerging green economy achieves a "just transition" that leaves no one behind.

Weaponized storytelling a la francaise: Demystifying France's narratives around its arms export policies

April 6, 2022

Through the five conflict case studies, the report explores other arguments that make up this storytelling a la francaise. Two of its pillars are the idea that French export control processes are already "strict, transparent and responsible" enough as they are, and the proposition that weapons sales are an intrinsically essential support to the country's strategic autonomy and foreign policy interests. This latter priority include the crucial need to be a reliable long-term supplier and to sustain strategic partnerships often associated with such arms trade.

True Value: Revealing the Positive Impacts of Food Systems Transformation

October 14, 2021

This report True Value: Revealing the Positive Impacts of Food Systems Transformation presents powerful and compelling evidence that food systems transformation is possible and having an impact now. Conducted by TMG Think Tank for Sustainability, an inclusive and true cost evaluation approach is applied to six food systems initiatives featured in the Beacons of Hope series to understand the breadth and depth of their positive impacts. True Cost Accounting (TCA) is an innovative tool that provides a holistic understanding of the relationships between agriculture, food, the environment, and human well-being.Using TCA enables us to see the significant monetary and non-monetary benefits sustainable food systems have on issues like public health, biodiversity conservation, climate, workers' rights, cultural diversity, and gender empowerment. It also demonstrates how TCA can be used for a variety of organizations -- from businesses, farmer cooperatives, food banks, research facilities, and more -- as a systemic approach to assess, measure, and value the positive and negative impacts of food systems. 

Covid-19 and the media: A pandemic of paradoxes

April 1, 2021

This report covers responses to the infringement of the right to freedom of information, misinformation on social media and the impact on public interest media caused by the Covid-19 pandemic with a human-rights based approach and gender-sensitive lens.As journalists on the frontline have supplied essential live-saving information to massively expanded audiences in need of reporting they could trust, advertising revenues have collapsed, leaving public interest media struggling to survive.The report features interviews with journalists from four IMS programme counties, Colombia, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka and Ukraine about the challenges created by the pandemic and case studies showcasing success stories from independent media outlets in Pakistan, the Philipines, Somalia and Zimbabwe.

Polarising Narratives and Deepening Fault Lines: Social Media, Intolerance and Extremism in Four Asian Nations

March 1, 2021

The use of social media platforms and chat applications in Asia has grown exponentially in recent years. Throughout the 2010s, violent extremists (VEs) in different parts of the continent exploited this growing access to audiences, disseminating their divisive messages broadly, while targeting individuals in fringe online groups. Technology companies and governments eventually imposed relatively effective measures to moderate overtly terrorist content, remove accounts and limit reach. However, the dynamics of broader communication on platforms that reward contentious engagement is continuing to inflame domestic political polarisation and societal division.Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar, and India are four Asian nations with unique but comparable experiences regarding the impact of online communications on social fault lines, extremism and violence. This report outlines and analyses these respective contexts.

Stemming the Tide of Coastal Overfishing: Fish Forever Program Results 2012–2017

July 1, 2018

Fish Forever is the first global solution that brings together 30-plus years of Rare's experience in community empowerment, social marketing and behavior adoption with the technical, policy and financial skills needed to secure lasting results for people and nature.This report describes the results of 41 Fish Forever sites, representing over 250 communities across Brazil, Indonesia and the Philippines. It is the first opportunity to analyze the past five years of design (2012–14) and implementation (2014–17). Using a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation protocol, the report synthesizes information from three country learning reports, 2,400 in-water surveys of coral reefs, 15,000 individual and household surveys, and the landing records from nearly 56,000 fishing trips — and represents the work of 70 Rare staff and 80 partner organizations who have committed the time of more than 557 global staff to this project.Ecological and social responses to three years of program implementation are promising, and importantly, results from the data infer that Fish Forever is working:* Ecologically, fish are recovering — fish biomass is increasing, both inside and outside no-take reserves;* Socially, communities are empowered — social resilience, pride and livelihoods are improving;* 51 legal and functional management bodies were established across the 41 sites;* 63 managed access areas were built or strengthened, encompassing nearly 600,000 hectares of coastal waters with 27,000 hectares secured in fully protected reserves; and* Strengthened policies and governance provide a clear path to scale.The initial implementation period has been an enormously valuable learning experience for Rare and our partners. This report is an opportunity to reflect on Fish Forever's impact and consider our work in the coming years.

Facilitating Financial Sustainability: Executive Summary

May 30, 2018

Financial sustainability remains a critical challenge for civil society organizations (CSOs) around the world. Although a variety of toolkits and research papers exist examining specific sustainability strategies, many CSOs continue to struggle to develop and maintain the resources they need to carry out their missions. This constraint limits organizational autonomy by inhibiting long-term planning and flexibility in designing and implementing activities. Financial sustainability is also a key piece of the puzzle to empower local organizations to take greater ownership of the development process, as a robust resource base provides the resilience needed for organizations to experiment with new models that reduce long-term donor dependence. This paper synthesizes the findings from the analyses of both funders and CSOs. This represents one part of the three-part FFS research series, and is best considered alongside the other two papers in the series to give a holistic perspective on CSO financial sustainability: Funder Approaches to CSO Sustainability, which includes a deep-dive analysis of the landscape of strategies used by funders interested in supporting sustainability, and Understanding Factors Driving CSO Financial Sustainability, which lays out the full findings from interviews with representatives from more than 30 CSOs.

Facilitating Financial Sustainability: Understanding the Drivers of CSO Financial Sustainability

May 4, 2018

Financial sustainability remains a critical challenge for Civil Society Organization (CSOs) around the world. Although a variety of toolkits and research papers exist examining specific sustainability strategies , many CSOs continue to struggle to develop and maintain the resources needed to carry out their missions. The Facilitating Financial Sustainability (FFS) activity was launched in 2017 to develop and test ways that different actors (including donors, policymakers, intermediary organizations, and CSOs themselves) can work together to improve the factors that drive financial sustainability for local organizations in different developing world contexts. This paper covers an analysis of the drivers of CSO sustainability based on interviews with CSO representatives. This represents one part of the three-part FFS research series, and is best considered alongside the other papers in the series to give a holistic perspective on CSO financial sustainability: "Funder Approaches to Facilitating CSO Financial Sustainability", which provides an overview of the funding landscape for financial sustainability in the six countries included in the study, and "Facilitating Financial Sustainability: Synthesis Report", which brings together the key findings from both other papers in the series.

Facilitating Financial Sustainability: Synthesis Report

May 4, 2018

Financial sustainability remains a critical challenge for Civil Society Organization (CSOs) around the world. Although a variety of toolkits and research papers exist examining specific sustainability strategies , many CSOs continue to struggle to develop and maintain the resources needed to carry out their missions. The Facilitating Financial Sustainability (FFS) activity was launched in 2017 to develop and test ways that different actors (including donors, policymakers, intermediary organizations, and CSOs themselves) can work together to improve the factors that drive financial sustainability for local organizations in different developing world contexts. This paper synthesizes the findings from the analyses of both funders and CSOs. This represents one part of the three-part FFS research series, and is best considered alongside the other papers in the series to give a holistic perspective on CSO financial sustainability: "Understanding the Drivers of CSO Financial Sustianabiltiy", which includes an analysis of specific factor combinations that support CSO sustainability in different contexts, and "Funder Approaches to Financial Sustainability", which provides an overview of the funding landscape for CSO financial sustainability int he six countries included in the study.

Facilitating Financial Sustainability: Funder Approaches

May 4, 2018

Financial sustainability remains a critical challenge for Civil Society Organization (CSOs) around the world. Although a variety of toolkits and research papers exist examining specific sustainability strategies , many CSOs continue to struggle to develop and maintain the resources needed to carry out their missions. The Facilitating Financial Sustainability (FFS) activity was launched in 2017 to develop and test ways that different actors (including donors, policymakers, intermediary organizations, and CSOs themselves) can work together to improve the factors that drive financial sustainability for local organizations in different developing world contexts. This paper covers an analysis of funder strategies to support CSO financial sustainability. This represents one part of the three-part FFS research series, and is best considered alongside the other papers in the series to give a holistic perspective on CSO financial sustainability: "Understanding the Drivers of CSO Financial Sustainability", which includes an analysis of specific factor combinations that support CSO sustainability in different contexts, and "Facilitating Financial Sustainability: Synthesis Report", which brings together the key findings from the other two papers in the series.

Infrastructure and Equipment for Unpaid Care Work: Household survey findings from the Philippines, Uganda and Zimbabwe - 2017 Household Care Survey report

March 5, 2018

Care work is essential for personal wellbeing, a healthy society and a functioning economy. But across the world, it is overwhelmingly done by women, which restricts their opportunities. Policy makers rarely recognize the public responsibility for facilitating unpaid care and domestic work through investments in infrastructure and care services.In 2017, Oxfam's Women's Economic Empowerment and Care (WE-Care) initiative conducted a Household Care Survey (HCS), collecting data in the Philippines, Uganda and Zimbabwe, to inform the design of public policies and local development programmes. The study tests which infrastructure, equipment and other factors influence care-work patterns. It finds that access to improved water sources is associated with reduced hours of care work, and household equipment facilitates men's participation in care. It also finds that heavy workloads related to long hours of unpaid care can impact women's health and well-being. Perceptions of care work, community expectations and fear of sanctions for deviating from social norms play an essential part in maintaining the gendered division of care work.The report presents recommendations for government and private sector decision-makers, development practitioners and researchers in the area of women's economic empowerment on how they can contribute to facilitate the recognition, reduction and redistribution of unpaid care work.