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
- My less than enthusiastic views on the Millennium Villages Project
- Fair Trade: from oppressed to oppressors?
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, contemplating life as a beneficiary 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
- Generalists beat specialists
- What’s wrong with Integrated Conservation & Development Projects? Parts 1 and 2, and later coda.
- REDD: a nice idea but founded on impractible principles and subsequently donorised to death
- Conservation maps: don’t you just hate ’em? Yes really!
- 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 and be careful of sweeping plans to change it
- Foisting our moral principles on others? After all, it is our money. And again.
- M&E: a top down imposition? And the social enterpreneurs’ perspective
- Is that aid/research project really going to be useful?
- Shoot to Kill when combating poachers? – it might not be as bad as you think
- Writing grant proposals: talking the talk, gender mainstreaming, and not forgetting a good theory of change
- 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.
Bottom Up Thinking 