Enrique Mendizabal

No Need for Second Best Choices in Education for the Poor

January 17, 2010 2 Comments

For too long the prevailing educational paradigm has been that the rich and the middle classes can access an education that opens their doors to a world of possibilities, while the poor focus on vocational skills. White collar jobs for the rich; blue collar jobs for the poor.

There is a sense of acceptance that, given the scarce resources of developing countries and the challenges that the public sector face, it is unhelpful for their population to demand both access and quality of education. Poor people, it is implied, should be content with the former.

Anthony Giddens Call for Changes in the Politics of Climate Change

January 17, 2010 Leave a comment

Anthony Giddens gave the opening key-note speech at the GDN 2010 Conference. After a broad introduction of the various climate change camps (the skeptics, the mainstream (ICCP view), and the radicals) he suggested that the Copenhagen Accord represents an advance: it offers a relatively smaller space for negotiation -with fewer actors involved; and it cuts across the difficulty of the split between developing and industrialised nations.

In fact, in his view, it presents an opportunity for a handful of countries to lead the way in developing a number of bilateral deals and multi-party negotiations. These deals, between the biggest polluters, are crucial if any change is to take place. Read more of this post

Filed under 11th Annual Conference, Conferences and Events, GDN Annual Conference Tagged with climate change, gdn2010, global public goods, politics