Katy Gardner opens her book Discordant Development: Global Capitalism and the Struggle for Connection in Bangladesh with a variation on that anthropological classic, an ethnographic vignette that c...

During recent years, the impact of China's engagement with Africa has gained increased attention. Discussions have revolved around the negative impact China potentially has on governance, human rights and debt sustainability, as well as the positive impacts of increased aid, trade and investment in Africa, especially the construction of much needed infrastructure. A number of researchers have also looked at some of the lessons of China's development that can be applied in Africa. One of the most important lessons from China for Africa is that countries should be responsible for their own development, and not rely on foreign donors. However, recipients are often restricted in their development strategies by donor requirements. The article will then analyse how China's engagement with Africa contributes to increasing the negotiating capital of countries in Africa helping them to take ownership of their own development processes. It will conclude that China's foreign aid programme is not geared specifically towards increasing recipient ownership, although there are a number of direct and indirect contributions. In addition, its international relations principles prevent more direct involvement in improving recipient ownership. For China to make a greater contribution to recipient ownership, a number of principles need to be revised.

This article refers to:The Past in the Present: Struggles Over Land and Community in Relation to the Dukuduku Claim for Land Restitution, South Africa

International Mediation / J. Michael Greig and Paul F. Diehl. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2012

This article investigates China's market reforms and rapid economic development from the late 1970s. The following questions are posed: (1) How did the Chinese ‘peasant revolution’ and the rural policies and institutions of Mao China influence the market reforms and subsequent economic development? (2) How does China's development after the market reforms relate to Marxist and Polanyian notions of proletarization and commodification of land and labour as preconditions of capitalist development? (3) To what extent and why does China's development after the market reforms diverge from East Asian growth with equity? (4) How does China's ‘decentralized developmental state’ influence its growth model and distribution? (5) The present Chinese government tries to promote greater equality and more domestic consumption. Is this a Polanyian ‘double movement’ in response to commodification of land and labour? How likely are these policies to succeed? These questions are addressed through historical–comparative analyses with comparisons of long-term rural dynamics of Mao China and the former Soviet Union. China after the market reforms is compared with England during its transition to agrarian capitalism and industrial capitalism from the sixteenth century through the early nineteenth century and with Taiwan and South Korea from the late 1940s until the 1980s.

The field of development studies provides a number of diverging perspectives to the pressing challenges of our time, but few clear answers to them. This article therefore questions why six decades of development studies have not been able to come up with more generally acceptable recommendations and solutions to old as well as new challenges. The argument is that as a field of study development studies has been so fixated with ruptures and paradigm shifts that much valuable insight of theories and perspectives rejected has been lost. In order to pursue this argument, the article's main focus is modernisation and dependency. While often argued to be opposites, modernisation and dependency approaches have in fact much in common and are still in use in both actual policy making and discourse as well as providing explanations of outcomes and events. However, current development practice also shows that the decades of criticism that development studies has provided towards both concepts have been lost on academics and politicians due to the eagerness to provide clear-cut categories. This argument is illustrated by recent empirical examples from Latin America and Sub-Sahara Africa.

This article refers to:Elephant in the Room? Problematising ‘New’ (Neoliberal) Biodiversity Conservation

The last decade has seen a proliferation of initiatives and actors involved with promoting alternative solutions to the problems of climate change and poverty. One such initiative is the Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD (+)) mechanism. The REDD (+) mechanism contains similar components to integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPS) and payment for environmental services (PES), where rewards for environmental conservation are supposed to bring co-benefits such as poverty reduction. However, there is little evidence to support this assumption. Instead studies suggest that pro-poor objectives within environmental policy deliver weak outcomes because they fail to acknowledge wider socio-economic contexts that hinder poor people from engaging in opportunities and accessing benefits. This article seeks to link climate justice at the international level with the local context focusing on the REDD (+) mechanism, looking at rights-based approaches and the issue of procedural and distributional justice. Using Ribot and Peluso's Access-theory (2003), the article explores justice and power relations in REDD (+) planning from a community perspective. The case study, Angai Village Land Forest Reserve (AVLFR) in south-eastern Tanzania, is a participatory forest management (PFM) area, currently under review to become a REDD (+) project site. The history of development intervention in Angai tells a story of donor dependency with limited participation by villagers. Our findings suggest that supporting local organisation, through capacity building and community networks, is a vital component of a more equitable and fair REDD climate change agreement.

Carbon trading between the industrial and developing world offers an opportunity to maintain global warming below critical limits and to promote global climate equity. The potential has not been realised in sub-Saharan Africa, which is most vulnerable in terms of food security in a changing climate. The objective of this study was to create an analytical framework to identify determining factors to enhance food security through mitigation of climate change. The potential for carbon trading between Finland and Ethiopia was the studied case. A hypothetical analytical framework was created based on literature. It was validated and developed through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions of global and national actors in Finland and Ethiopia and local actors from two contrasting Ethiopian regions. The qualitative analysis highlighted increasing agricultural productivity and facilitating internal national markets as the main means to enhance food security through mitigation of climate change, triggered by generating carbon income. The socio-economic determinants of major importance appeared to be multi-level coherence of policy and action, early access to financial incentives, quality of governance, infrastructure for internal markets, population density, land tenure systems and knowledge about carbon markets, mitigation options and their verification. The main agro-ecological determinants were local hydrology, management history and present land management. The immediate attention of decision-makers is drawn to policy coherence and development of funding, verification and knowledge on carbon sequestration through agricultural management. The analytical framework is concluded to be valid for interaction between industrial countries and specific national and local SSA contexts.