For those new to this blog, here is a selection of my favourite, must-read posts. Note this is not the same as the most read blog posts (which is highly dependent upon random eddies in the blogosphere), but a personal selection; included are some hidden (rarely read) gems that I thought worth highlighting.
The Top Ten:
- My first post on Sustainability remains my signature post
- Do we need more aid?
- The tragedy of a twisted aid system and its chewed-up foot soldiers
- Paternalism in Development
- Development takes time
- The psychology of giving and the corruption double whammy
- The Scaling-up Fallacy
- Small is beautiful
- Generalists beat specialists
- My less than enthusiastic views on the Millennium Villages Project
Other Worthies:
- How not to do sustainability: 1 and 2.
- How to deal with the acute problem of the Last Mile in conservation and development project delivery?
- Who you gonna call? – the advantages of NGOs in community conservation
- Learning by Doing
- When “on the ground” is actually thin air
- More thinking about whether more money would help: 1 and 2
- Rationalising the expat aid worker’s life: Life in the Sun, the Logic of Compassion and how patronising is your mere presence?
- Who the hell do I think I’m accountable to? And what being accountable also means.
- KISI – project iteration and my contribution to the world of ridiculous management jargon
- More on scaling up
- What’s wrong with Integrated Conservation & Development Projects? Parts 1 and 2, and later coda.
- REDD: a nice idea but founded on impractible principles
- The inevitability of international climate change politics
- Beating up on Evil Inc (CSR reprised) – aka those corporations ain’t all so bad
- Good governance is in the simple things
- What is it you really want as a conservationist?
- Political support for aid
- Foisting our moral principles on others? After all, it is our money.
- Social enterpreneurs and M&E
- Is that aid/research project really going to be useful?
- Things sure got bad, but now they are getting better: Why can’t Africa feed itself any more? and Don’t forget how it was before
- Shoot to Kill when combating poachers? – it might not be as bad as you think
- Writing grant proposals: talking the talk and gender mainstreaming
- Trust in the aid and development system: parts 1, 2 and 3
- Aid ‘Effectiveness’: The Aid Effectiveness Officer, focusing on the important stuff 1 and 2, and the cringe-worthy Ten things I didn’t want to know about aid ineffectiveness
- And, finally, how I wish things worked: My ideal donor and how I would handle tricky governance issues
Otherwise, I can recommend the View from the Bottom category of posts into which I sort any post that I think is relevant to the rather different viewpoint that one gets working in the field rather than an NGO head office or capital city, whilst those looking for more of my basest sarcasm can check out all my rants.
