Research for Development (RfD)

Development

The Alliance understands 'international development' as delivered by aid agencies to be the deliberate processes and interventions put in place to improve the well being of people in less developed countries.

However, development has a history of leading to unintended and sometimes harmful outcomes. For example moves to reform health sectors can lead to decreased affordability of health care for the poorest members of the community. Or increasing conversion of forested land to agricultural production may decrease the food and housing materials available to the landless poor. Additionally changes may cause short term benefit whilst causing longer term harm by introducing non-sustainable changes such as increasing agricultural productivity while concurrently degrading soil health. Research for development can assist aid investment to achieve desired development outcomes that are sustainable.

Sustainable Development

Sustainable development was first defined by the Bruntland Commission as "Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable - to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". This suggests that development needs to achieve acceptable levels of well being for people as well as a sustainable environment that can provide resources and environmental services into the future. This can be represented in the following graph which combines a widely used proxy metric for human development, the United Nations' Human Development Index (HDI) and a measure of how many earth equivalent planet's would be needed if world wide consumption was at the level of consumption of that region. The HDI is a measure of national development that combines indicators of life expectancy, educational attainment and income, with 0.8 being the marker between high and medium human development. While an ecological footprint to biocapacity ratio greater than 1 indicates how many more earths are needed if the current rate of consumption of that region where to be the consumption level for all of the world's population.

Fig. 1. Global and Regional Trends in Sustainable Development. Regional and world development (HDI) versus resource demand (Footprint to global biocapacity ratio). Points indicate values for 2003, and grey trailing lines show trends from 1975 to 2003. The shaded box represents a domain where both points meet our suggested minimum criteria for 'sustainable development' (HDI ≥ 0.8, Footprint to biocapacity ratio ≤ 1.0). Ecological Economics Volume 64, Issue 3, 15 January 2008, Pages 470-474 Measuring sustainable development - Nation by nation Daniel D. Moran et al.

Sustainable development then would lie in the upper left hand corner where both human development aspirations and ecologically sustainable consumption meet. Overshoot on the ecological side could lead to conflicts over the control of resources resulting in social upheaval and increased levels of conflict, which are likely to have a disproportionate impact on the poor. Failure to achieve a HDI of 0.8 indicates impoverished lives where people cannot achieve their potential. This graph provides clear visual evidence of the development trajectories needed if people are to enjoy a high quality of life in a sustainable world. The work of research for development is to provide evidence and learning that assist decision maker's move nations along more sustainable trajectories.

Human Well Being

Well being can be conceptualised as the dynamic outcome of the economic, environmental and social services (the triple bottom line - TBL) that people are exposed to. There is a need to recognise the interconnected nature of the component parts and consider the whole as a dynamic system. These means all parts of the TBL are valid considerations in research for development, as are the interconnections.

The social domain includes both the provision of services, and the uptake of goods and services, from the environment and through the market place. Within the environmental domain there is a need to consider the integrity of the system and its ability to self-perpetuate and continue to provide goods and services to society and for the economy. The economic domain includes the contribution from community services (labour and networks) and environmental goods and services.

Environmental assets (natural resources) are critical to economic growth. The depletion of natural resources more quickly than wastes can be converted back to resources depletes the natural systems necessary to support life and is increasingly defining economic possibilities.

Non-sustainable development policies often have first and greatest impact on the poorest members of the community due to their direct dependence on natural resources, need to revert to natural resource harvesting when livelihoods become threatened and lack of capacity to pay to alleviate disadvantage. Short term trade-offs that diminish or damage the natural or social capacity of the system can lead to an unsustainable trajectory for the economy overall. History shows us that the short term use and over use of natural resources or other environmental assets can lead to short term gain in the market place, but long term failure of the society and ultimately the economy. In other words, unconditional growth is economically undesirable and the quality of growth is as important as the quantity in most cases. In attempting to achieve sustainable development improvements in well being should be ongoing and not result in lessened opportunities for future generations to achieve the same or better standards of well being.

Research for Development

RfD provides information and knowledge that can help decision makers move toward more sustainable development trajectories. The Alliance recognises most problems of development as being complex problems that cross scales and sectors. This requires broader thinking using systems based approaches. More narrow technical problems need to be understood within this bigger picture view to understand where interventions or changes should be made, and the likely impacts of those changes. RfD then includes macro-scale system dynamics, regional systems analysis, community level systems analysis and institutional analysis, as well as technical research that is understood within this systems view. This requires integrated research which brings together different elements in a holistic way to better understand the entirety. In doing so, integrated research is able to cross conventional boundaries that exist within and around science.