New Evidence
New kinds of evidence can play an outsized role in building more resilient lives as people around the world work to diminish poverty. And a host of low-tech and high-tech innovations are providing new kinds of evidence: New ways of monitoring from the top down or the bottom up to provide real-time alerts about everything from weather to the risks of disease. New ways of mapping and modeling social, economic, and environmental conditions empower people to change those conditions. New indexes reframe the goals and therefore the very nature of development efforts. All these tools connect people with information and with one another, creating feedback loops that individuals, communities , and even entire regions can use to catalyze change in the ecologies of poverty and wealth.
The Pivotal ChallengeAction Zones
For decades, wealth and poverty have been measured in terms of GDP, and governments have often been evaluated on how quickly they can grow GDP. But across the developing world, countries are experimenting with new kinds of metrics and indexes to set standards of well-being that go beyond these limited measures. These novel measures, in turn, point to new interventions.
Good living objectives
Governance index
Measurement of poverty
The Pivotal Challenge
Freedom of Information under Threat
As powerful as new evidence is in catalyzing change, its potential is minimized if it is systematically suppressed or controlled. From Latin America to Africa and Asia, freedom of information—whether from traditional press or new media channels—is under attack from those who stand to lose wealth or power. A key challenge over the next decade will be securing the right to these new forms of evidence.
Attacks on journalists
Press and Society Institute has emergency number for journalists
Censorship strategies
FACT reports blocking of 500 websites a day in Thailand
Restrictive information laws
OSISA blocked recent Angolan legislation to limit Internet freedoms
Discover More Signals
Bangladesh harnessing mobile phones for early warning systems
Tourism quantified
Low-tech aids in tracking maternal and infant care
Australia laws to promote building efficiency
GPS cameras monitor remote development projects
Trapia: Traceable Tilapia all the way from “egg to plate”
Multi-stakeholder data and analytics platform to track education interventions
Growth in India’s slum population…or census accuracy
Students in India launch satellites to help farmers, fishermen, and the environment
Mapping, digitizing records fight corruption, aid in proper distribution of land to the poor in Bangladesh
Correlation does not equal causation
Bibliometrics as a tool for R&D, emerging tool for foresight
Living Well principles written into Bolivian constitution
United Arab Emirates government to address coastal pollution in region
India’s five-year plan calls for double-digit growth
Media, ICT as a tool for minority empowerment in Morocco
Citizen oversight of government spending via mobile phones and social media in Indonesia
User-generated media opens new digital watchdog battlegrounds
Social media, mobility of labor connects diasporas and ethnic/political minorities
Urbanization, mobile phones, aging, NGOs and media shaping GLBTQ identity in Southeast Asia
Peruvian television gets hyperlocal