About IDRC
A Crown corporation, we support leading thinkers who advance knowledge and solve practical development problems. We provide the resources, advice, and training they need to implement and share their solutions with those who need them most. In short, IDRC increases opportunities—and makes a real difference in people’s lives.
Working with our development partners, we multiply the impact of our investment and bring innovations to more people in more countries around the world. We offer fellowships and awards to nurture a new generation of development leaders.
What we do
IDRC funds research in developing countries to create lasting change on a large scale.
To make knowledge a tool for addressing pressing challenges, we
- provide developing-country researchers financial resources, advice, and training to help them find solutions to local problems.
- encourage knowledge sharing with policymakers, researchers, and communities around the world.
- foster new talent by offering fellowships and awards.
- strive to get new knowledge into the hands of those who can use it.
In doing so, we contribute to Canada’s foreign policy, complementing the work of Global Affairs Canada, and other government departments and agencies.
Members:
Resources
Displaying 76 - 80 of 324Durban’s port-petrochemical complex as a site of economic and environmental violence
A proposed massive expansion of a petrochemical complex in South Durban’s port area has come under criticism for both economic and environmental violence. The recent history of cities becoming hyperactive export platforms is not merely a function of globalisation. Public policy is a factor, and especially the intellectual project of urban neoliberalism; the strategy was explicit in South Africa’s transition from apartheid to export-oriented neoliberalism.
Explaining spatial diversity in Latin American rural development : structures, institutions, and coalitions
This article summarizes the results of a research program conducted in 11 Latin America countries, addressing two
questions: (1) what factors determine territorial development dynamics that lead to economic growth, poverty reduction, and improved
income distribution? (2) What can be done to stimulate this kind of territorial dynamics? We highlight five “bundles of factors” that we
found in 19 case studies of territorial development 1, as well as the role of social territorial coalitions that appear to be necessary for
Poverty reduction through dispossession : the milk boom and the return of the elite in Santo Tomás, Nicaragua
Ideally, poverty indicators improve because poor people’s livelihoods are improved. They can, however, also improve
because poor people are expelled from the territory. This article explores the case of the cattle region of Chontales, Nicaragua, which
during 1998–2005 experienced economic growth and declining poverty rates, spurred by investments and organizational development.
The article argues that in the absence of pro-poor coalitions, these investments facilitated the return and strengthening of the local elite
Cambodia’s agricultural land resources : status and challenges
The conversion of lands used for food crop production to other uses, the ongoing expansion of cultivated areas, and the situation of unused or under-used cropland in Cambodia needs to become closely regulated. The problem of unused and under-used agricultural lands being held for speculative purposes requires serious attention. Specific policy actions could include promulgating agricultural land law and land-use regulations and creating a national Agricultural Land Research and Development authority. These and other recommendations are proposed in this policy brief.
Importance of inequality for natural resource governance : evidence from two Nicaraguan territories
Natural resources constitute an important axis around which rural territorial dynamics revolve. Based on empirical
registration of how applications for and denouncements of natural resource use are dealt with in two Nicaraguan rural territories, this
paper examines the importance of inequality for the institutional practices through which district-level governance of natural resource
use takes place. Notable differences are identified. The paper concludes that institutional practices which promote rule-based natural