The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are global, in the sense that they are to be reached by the whole world, not by countries individually. True commitment to MDGs has led many to ask the questions: will my country reach all or some of the MDG targets by 2015? Are we on track? (...)

Few things are as important for development as the availability of data and unfettered access. Without data there can be no needs assessment. It will scarcely be possible to design effective policies or to implement, monitor and evaluate them. Data are not important only for governments....

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Much research to date has tended to view vulnerability (and resilience) by discipline or sector, yet individuals and households experience multiple, interacting and sometimes compound vulnerabilities. Cross-disciplinary thinking is emerging as multi-dimensional vulnerability is likely to come...

The Cadastro Único is the main registry for programmes and policies directed at low-income populations in Brazil. It was formally created in 2001, through the consolidation of a number of different cash transfer programmes. The registry intended to unify, in a single database, the individual...

The negotiations within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have had an increasing impact on domestic policies in developing countries, especially the largest emitters among them, such as India, China, South Africa and Brazil (member countries of the so-called...

Since the late 1990s, conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have been broadly disseminated as one of the best practices in social protection. Brazil has been a pioneer in this area and today has one of the largest CCTs in the world, covering 26 per cent of the population. Created by the government...

The Green Guide project, see One Pager No. 194, funded by the Climate Development Knowledge Network, provides an important opportunity to carry out action-oriented research and to explore some of the innately complex political issues which arise in the process of re-calibrating economies for...

Despite the increasing use and influence of global goals, little has been written about goal setting as a particular type of policy instrument in global governance. According to the UN intellectual history project (jolly et al, 2009), goal setting originated in the 1960s and made a major...