Emma Mawdsley

Trust, accountability, and face-to-face interaction in North–South NGO relations

Janet Townsend is a Research Fellow in Geography at the University of Durham. Her interest in NGOs came from women pioneer settlers in Latin American rainforests, when Mexican respondents proved to see NGOs as the best prospective outside help. Emma Mawdsley lectures at Birkbeck College, University of London. In addition to her NGO research, she is working on the environmental beliefs and behaviours of Indias middle classes. Gina Porter is working with Emma Mawdsley and Janet Townsend on a joint study of NGO–state relations in Ghana and India. Her other current research focuses on market access, market institutions, and related urban food-supply issues in Ghana, Nigeria, and Zambia.Janet Townsend is a Research Fellow in Geography at the University of Durham. Her interest in NGOs came from women pioneer settlers in Latin American rainforests, when Mexican respondents proved to see NGOs as the best prospective outside help. Emma Mawdsley lectures at Birkbeck College, University of London. In addition to her NGO research, she is working on the environmental beliefs and behaviours of Indias middle classes. Gina Porter is working with Emma Mawdsley and Janet Townsend on a joint study of NGO–state relations in Ghana and India. Her other current research focuses on market access, market institutions, and related urban food-supply issues in Ghana, Nigeria, and Zambia.

After Chipko: From environment to region in Uttaranchal

Although the Chipko movement is practically non‐existent in its region of origin it remains one of the most frequently deployed examples of an environmental and/or a womens movement in the South. A small but growing number of commentators are now critiquing much neopopulist theorising on Chipko, and this article provides an overview of these critiques. It then takes the debate further with reference to a more recent regional movement in the hills. By doing so, the author argues that it is possible to develop a more plausible account of gender, environment and the state in the Uttaranchal region, and illustrate common weaknesses in neopopulist understandings of Chipko and other social movements in the South.

The millennium challenge account: Neo-liberalism, poverty and security1

ABSTRACT March 2002 George W. Bush announced that the new Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) would increase US development assistance by

DFID, the Private Sector and the Re-centring of an Economic Growth Agenda in International Development

5 billion per annum. The MCAs goal of ‘reducing poverty through growth’ was highlighted in the November 2002 National Security Strategy, which elevated development to join defence and diplomacy as one of the three pillars of the ‘war on terror’. This paper critiques the crude and dogmatic alignments that the NSS and the MCA draw between neoliberal economic policies, poverty reduction and security. Drawing on an analysis of the first five MCA ‘Compacts’ with Cape Verde, Honduras, Madagascar, Nicaragua and Georgia, I argue that the newly invigorated security-development paradigm is being used to legitimate more spending on ‘development’ programmes which are primarily intended to serve the interests of US consumers, manufacturers and investors. Despite the rhetoric, poverty reduction is at best a secondary objective. The paradox of American empire is that its pursuit of economic hegemony through the extension and ever-deepening penetration of neoliberal capitalism (in which the MCA is one small vehicle) precisely undermines the conditions for sustainable profitability, as well as social justice. This analysis suggests that like its military and diplomatic counterparts, the developmental ‘pillar’ of national security will contribute to the erosion of human and political security for the United States and the rest of the world.

Non-DAC donors and the changing landscape of foreign aid: the (in)significance of India's development cooperation with Kenya

This article examines the way in which the UKs Department for International Development (DFID) is returning an economic growth agenda to the centre of its mandate. The private sector is pitched as the primary engine of this strategy, with a growing place for corporations, consultancies and the financial sector in particular. The shift can be understood as a strategic response to an increasingly challenging domestic context, and to a turbulent external arena for the “traditional” donors. This strategy may well achieve growth outcomes in partner countries, but without sufficient conceptual rigour, regulatory oversight or attention to the “connective fabric” between growth and “development”, the latter is more uncertain. DFIDs direction reflects wider trends in international development norms, finances and actors. While in some regards we could say that the “traditional” donors are “returning” to older development models, they are doing so with new tools and in new contexts. An optimistic assessment is that this will result in a more effective “beyond aid” development agenda, but there is a significant risk of capture by state-corporate interests that will not aim for or achieve progressive, just development outcomes.

Nonsecessionist Regionalism in India: The Uttarakhand Separate State Movement

Abstract The last few years have witnessed a growing interest in so-called “non-DAC donors” (NDDs), and China in particular. While this is understandable, there is some danger that the diversity of the NDDs is overlooked, and the debate becomes distorted by an overly China-oriented lens. The focus of this paper is Indias development cooperation agendas and activities in Africa, and more specifically, Kenya. The paper argues that despite growing “noise” about the wider phenomenon of the rise of the non-DAC donors within “mainstream” foreign aid arenas, the DAC donors in Kenya are only concerned with China. The paper asks whether Indias meagre development cooperation relations with Kenya rightly disqualifies it from the attention of the DAC community, or whether the country level is also an appropriate scale for strategically oriented dialogue and possible cooperation, Indias modest development contributions notwithstanding.

Development geography 1 Cooperation, competition and convergence between ‘North’ and ‘South’

Studies of regionalism in India have tended to concentrate on the secessionist struggles in Kashmir and Punjab, and on centre-State relations within the federal union. An issue which has received far less attention has been that of nonsecessionist regionalism—the various demands for the creation of new smaller States within India. The persistent tendency of the centre has been to view these movements as threatening and divisive and, therefore, with varying degrees of success, to resist and repress them. However, a number of commentators have suggested that smaller States are one way in which Indias federal structure could become more equipoised, decentralised, and participatory. In this paper the author examines the recent mass movement for a separate State of Uttarakhand, an area which currently forms the Himalayan part of the State of Uttar Pradesh. Given the limitations of space, she concentrates on one aspect of the movement, namely how protestors have mobilised particular grammars and strategies of resistance in their struggle to persuade the central government (the final arbiter) that their demands for separation from Uttar Pradesh are justified and that the creation of Uttarakhand would benefit both the region and the country, economically, environmentally, and strategically.

“Environmentality” in the Neoliberal City: Attitudes, Governance and Social Justice

In this report I examine two of the most important trends bearing down on the international development regime in 2015, a landmark year. The first is the consolidation of South–South development cooperation (acknowledging the problematic nature of this designation), materially, ontologically and ideationally. The second is the response of the (so-called) ‘traditional’ donors to the opportunities and challenges provided by the ‘rise of the South’, in the context of the uneven reverberations of the post-2007/8 global financial crisis. Together, these interpolated trends have contributed to an unprecedented rupture in the North–South axis that has dominated post-1945 international development norms and structures – an axis that has also provided the focus for radical and critical approaches to the geographies of development. The resulting development landscape is complex and turbulent, bringing stimulating challenges to theorists of aid and development.

Development geography II: Financialization

In this paper, I discuss how Arun Agrawal’s notion of “environmentality” might be used to think about the changing environmental beliefs and behaviors among India’s “middle classes”. Agrawal’s arguments concern the impacts that devolved local institutions for forest management have had on environmental practices and consciousness. Through an appreciation and critique of Agrawal’s work, I question whether similar shifts towards plural, decentralized and participatory regulation in urban contexts might also foster the environmental subjectivities that Agrawal sees as part of the emergence of new political subjects “positively engaged” with the environment. Using Delhi’s bhagidari scheme as an example, I suggest that we should be skeptical about the likelihood that diverse classes will identify shared environmental interests; or that emerging environmental concerns amongst the middle classes are necessarily ecologically effective or socially progressive. Nonetheless, as Agrawal reminds us, within any social group we can expect a spectrum of environmental subjectivities based on more than simple interests and identities.

Public perceptions of India’s role as an international development cooperation partner: domestic responses to rising ‘donor’ visibility

Financialization is now a key area of research within Geography. Development geographers have made significant (although arguably under-recognized) contributions, notably in relation to household and ‘everyday’ financialization, as well as recent work on the financialization of nature, land, infrastructure, health and energy in the Global South. In this progress report, I argue that donors are currently seeking to accelerate and deepen financialization in the name of ‘development’. Foreign aid is being used to de-risk investment, ‘escort’ capital to ‘frontier’ markets, and carry out the mundane work of transforming objects into assets available to speculative capital flows. Financialization both permeates and goes beyond the more commonly referenced private sector-led development. Donors are pursuing these strategies and programmes with little or no reference to the threats posed by greater financialization.