We will be happy to present a programme on selected challenges in development research: Safety and security for researchers in difficult settings; influencing research funding policies; and academic freedom. The EADI Directors’ Meeting will once more connect research institutes for more effective co-operation by sharing ideas, identifying common problems, discussing new trends. The key is networking. In Europe, there is no better occasion for institute directors to meet, exchange and discuss.

By Andrea Beck

Just over 15 years have passed since the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB) published a plan that proposed, inter alia, the concept of Water Operator Partnerships (WOPs). In this plan, which was released in March 2006, WOPs were envisioned as “a structured programme of cooperation among water operators, based on mutual support and on a not-for-profit basis.” The idea was to use peer-to-peer learning and knowledge exchange to develop the capacities of water operators, so that they could deliver reliable, good-quality services on the way to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

By Anna-Katharina Hornidge and Imme Scholz

The political and economic environment in which development policy operates has undergone radical changes since the emergence of this policy field in the 1950s and 1960s. Back then, newly independent nation states made their first steps in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Many of them are now politically and economically established states.  According to the World Bank classification the number of middle-income countries now exceeds the number of low-income countries.