Information, knowledge and communication – 3rd training on the social Web in Bonn

First published on the Euforic Blog

In a good tradition Euforic facilitated the third Web2Share Training in Bonn. The event took place from 19-20 November 2009 and was co-organized with EADI, the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes.

Like in the years before a diverse group of information and communication professionals from several countries, including Switzerland, Norway, Italy and Germany joined the training. Among other things they expected to learn how to work with social webtools such as wikis to cooperate and to share knowledge in open and closed networks. Furthermore they were looking for guidelines for social media usage in NGOs, good monitoring tools and podcasting.

The Euforic trainers provided an up-to-date overview of possibilities and advantages that web 2.0 tools and social media offer for their work. Popular buzzwords included “social bookmarking”, “RSS”, “wikis”, “blogs”, “Googling”, and “podcasting”. Besides, we looked at how to connect and integrate these new tools into daily business processes across the organization, for communication, knowledge sharing and campaigning.

Since an increasing number of our participants have already some experience with the new Social Web, we spent more time on storytelling and discussion then in our first trainings. We compared experiences and explained new ways to apply tools strategically for different purposes. To name just a few, discussions touched upon issues like the pros and cons of social networking sites for organizational purposes, privacy and content ownership, or the use of internal micro-blogging tools.

Towards the end of the training participants were fascinated by the different possibilities the new Web provides but also called for more advanced training.

Some interesting quotes from the evaluation:

“I think I can teach the communication crowd how to work with some of the new tools but I’m afraid it won’t go that well with the researchers, who are not always keen on sharing.”

 

“I knew most of the tools already, but this workshop confirmed that you really need to look at the target group to know which tool or package to use. I feel that I don’t have the time to use all this, but what is worse is that my colleagues think that everything connected to a computer is up to me, because I’m the IT person”

“The Web still very depends on written language but I’m sure that podcasts are the future.”

 

“I heard what is going on on the Web before but now I’m not afraid anymore to try it out and use it for my organization”

 

Former Euforic associates and staff will look into possibilities to organize a Master Class in the first half of 2010 which will address the challenges participants face when they go back to their organizations.

See some pictures of the workshop

Explore the Euforic Web2Share Wiki

Find more information about Web 2.0 in our newsfeed

 

Options for architectural reform for EU development cooperation

First published on the Euforic Blog

A recent ODI Background Note looks at key issues of EU development cooperation which will be decided upon in the remaining months of 2009. The paper assumes that the Lisbon Treaty will come into force on January 1 2010 after a positive Irish referendum in October.

This implies that key decisions need to be taken, including the appointment of the Council President, the High Commissioner for Foreign and Security Policy as well as the creation of the European External Action Service.

“Although the institutional location and the role of the new High Representative are outlined in the Lisbon Treaty, the question remains as to how the role will be balanced with the triple Presidencies – those of the European Council, the Council of Ministers and the Commission.”

According to the authors the High Representative could be improve EU stabilization efforts in the areas of conflict prevention, crisis management and post-conflict and institution building. However, the political influence of this post over development cooperation could lead to a policy which might be overridden by short-term foreign policy goals.

The paper also provides three models for a future Commission structure. The first model describes an overarching DG International Development with ACP countries, Asia, Latin America, the neighbourhood, the Middle East and former Soviet Union under one roof and a broad mandate managing all aspects of the program cycle as well as humanitarian aid. The second model would combine all regions as well plus the aid programming. However the neighbourhood and enlargement policies as well as humanitarian aid would stay separate. The third model proposes a DG for development policy, programming and humanitarian aid. Here programming and implementation would be separated in different DGs. Also part of this suggestion is a DG for the EU neighbourhood and enlargement policy.

Irrespective of the model that will be preferred, the authors underline that:

“[i]n any model [...] an important principle and lesson learned from the current set-up will be to avoid, or at least reduce, the creation of conflicting and overlapping portfolios in the Commission.”

The paper is one of the outcomes of the ODI European Development Cooperation Support Programme.

See the Euforic newsfeed and dossier on EU development cooperation and management.

See also EADI’s EDC2020 project on the future of EC development policy and cooperation

 

Global Perspectives on the Middle East Imbroglio

First published on the Euforic Blog

The cover story of the August issue of Global Perspectives gives a rather skeptical prognosis for a new start of the Middle East Peace Process. Although the Obama Administration increased pressure on the Israeli Government, currently there seems to be little hope that it is going to negotiate the high threshold it built in order to accept a Palestinian State.

Also in this issue Thomas Hammarberg (Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe) writes about the value of budget analysis to assess government’s human rights commitment. In the European context budget analysis was so far successfully used to monitor gender mainstreaming. The key problem in all human rights work is a gap between the promises and the implementation. This gap can only be bridged when budgets themselves reflect the pledges made.

A summary of the UNDP Arab Development Report 2009 discusses a European Neighborhood Region which should be on the European foreign policy agenda. Citizens of the Arab region suffer under a lack of human security caused by regional conflicts, environmental problems, lacking rule of law, crime and health challenges. Further the region which faces rapid population growth has to deal with a high unemployment rate and permanent internal migration. Europe needs to assist the Arab countries in dealing with this enormous amount of problems in order to avoid negative effects like irregular migration and security risks.

Regarding the ongoing Climate Change Negotiations Ramesh Jaura describes the different positions during the latest informal talks from 10-14 August in Bonn. According to diplomat voices there still is too little progress to finally settle a global climate deal in Copenhagen this December.

With the UN Climate Change Summit on September 22 ahead Thalif Deen raises doubts on the usefulness of the UN summit culture. Since the Rio Summit in 1992 there have been dozens of summits and review summits on various themes, at best leading to political declarations which in the end often lacked funding for implementation. The journalist believes that the upcoming summit will also be nothing more than a talk-fest.

Global Perspectives is a bi-lingual (English/German) joint production by IPS Inter Press Service Europe and the Global Cooperation Council, published by Globalom Media. The monthly editions on various themes of international cooperation and development are downloadable for free.

See also the Euforic newsfeeds on IPS Europe and the Middle East.

by Martin Behrens

 

The world in 2050: Policy options to meet global challenges

First published on the Euforic Blog

Based on two studies addressing world development for the coming 50-100 years – the UN Millennium Assessment (MEA) and an analysis by the International Energy Agency (IEA) supporting the G8 Gleneagles plans (see the presentation) – a new DIE Discussion Paper provides a critical appraisal of the scenario studies and singles out factors which are important for future development policy.

The MEA study suggests four scenarios, described by their position in a 2×2 matrix with the characteristics pro-active / reactive policy and globalized / regionalized policy at the x-y axes. The scenarios explain the possible developments determined by the policy choices made until the year 2050 and beyond that until 2100. They identify different drivers which directly or indirectly influence future development. They speak about the climate, plant nutrient use, land conversion, diseases and invasive species as having a direct effect on the scenarios. Further the demographic, economic and socio-political development as well as the scientific and technological progress is described as indirect factors.

The MEA study makes it very clear that climate change is going to be the primary factor:

“given that climate change – which is primarily driven by energy-related Green House Gas emissions – is very likely to be the predominant force adversely affecting ecosystems over the course of the 21st century, discrete policy efforts to preserve ecosystems in the absence of decisive global climate change mitigation action would seem to be as useful as re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

All but one scenarios will bring considerable improvements for world climate with different effects on human welfare. However compared to the reference year 2000 they all expect continued loss of biodiversity and degradation of ecosystems. To name just a few figures dependent on the policy choices:

• demand for food crops is projected to grow by 75-85%
• water withdrawals increase by 20-85%

Continued conversions of ecosystems are consequently caused by the pressure to meet agricultural and/or infrastructural demands. Mostly affected will be developing countries, in particular tropical and sub-tropical regions, the study predicts.

“The combination of exposure to an already fragile environment, dominance of climate-sensitive sectors in economic activity and low autonomous adaptive capacity in these regions entail a high vulnerability to the harmful effects of global warming on agriculture production and food security, water resources, human health, physical infrastructure and ecosystems.”

According to the author this requires the full integration of environmental concerns into the formulation of future development strategies. Nonetheless a recent WWF review of integrated water resource management in EC development programming showed that this is done on the level of policy formulation but is inadequately implemented in policy action. The message of the scenarios for policymakers is that although upcoming challenges are serious, policy options still exists.

“If decisive and proactive action is taken, the challenges are manageable without dramatic implications for growth aspirations of developing and developed countries. The task ahead for development policy is to assist in translating this message into concrete action.”

 See the Euforic bookmarks on climate change and environment and development cooperation

See also our newsfeeds on water and sanition, energy and food security