City 2.0

IIED Senior Fellow, David Satterthwaite will be giving a Ted Talk on the future of the city at TEDxHamburg on 4 June 2013.  Focusing on how to ensure the urban poor drive their own development agendas, he will describe two successful initiatives in Africa and Asia, where slum dwellers have been able to improve their lives by securing investment in the initiatives they choose and by forming partnerships with city governments. We will include a recording of the talk in next week's newsletter so watch this space...

Scaling-up certification in artisanal and small-scale mining: Innovations for inclusivity

The challenges of poverty, marginalisation and vulnerability characterise the livelihoods of artisanal and small-scale miners worldwide. Linking these miners to supply chains and guaranteeing good social and environmental practice via certification should help to address these development issues and this paper seeks to identify existing and emerging innovations and best practice in sustainability certification that enable fair and beneficial inclusion of producers.

More new publications from IIED in May:

Monitoring payments for watershed services schemes in developing countries

Urdu Bazaar: A study on the acceptability of alternative energy sources for a book market in Karachi

The Spanish version of Small producer agency in the globalised market: making choices in a changing world is now available to download.

Post-2015: framing a new approach to sustainable development

This briefing paper was prepared by the Independent Research Forum on a Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda, whose members include IIED and other think tanks in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, North America and South America. The paper is the first in a series that will examine how post-2015 goals and strategies can address development issues such as water, agriculture and food security, energy security, and urbanisation in a way that integrates their environmental, economic and social dimensions.

Ashden Conference 2013 -Are we on the brink of a sustainable energy revolution?

19 June 2013, 9am at the Royal Society, London

There is a quiet revolution happening in sustainable energy, both in the UK and around the world. People are waking up to its myriad benefits. As well as cutting carbon, equally important is how it can put more money in people’s pockets, bring communities closer together, create jobs, and help improve health and wellbeing. Hear this year’s Ashden Award finalists share their role in creating that revolution, what lessons they have learned and what they think needs to happen next to take sustainable energy out of the niche and into the mainstream.

Join the debate on Twitter: #Ashden13