Achieving Water Security

Lessons from research in water supply, sanitation, and hygiene in Ethiopia

Edited by Roger Calow, Eva Ludi, and Josephine Tucker 

Achieving water security remains an elusive goal across large swathes of sub-Saharan Africa, yet the benefits of investing in water, sanitation and hygiene to achieve basic water security and alleviate poverty are clear. Households benefit through a range of health, educational, nutritional and broader livelihood impacts; local, regional and national economies benefit from greater economic activity, spending and investment; and over the longer-term, households and economies benefit through greater resilience to climate change and shocks. 

£18.95 /€28.95 / $37.95 | January 2013, 276 pages, paperback | ISBN: 978-1-85339-764-6

Toward Resilience

A guide to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation

Marilise Turnbull, Charlotte L. Sterrett, and Amy Hilleboe

Toward Resilience is an introductory resource for development and humanitarian practitioners working with populations at risk of the impacts of climate change and other hazards.It is aimed at programme management and technical staff of development and humanitarian organizations, and seeks to strengthen understanding of the basic approaches and principles that can be applied to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation initiatives. The guide also provides practical guidance on how to integrate disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation into the programme management cycle and adapt activities to a range of contexts and development and humanitarian sectors.

'... this guide is a fantastic resource. Not only does it recognize the importance of involving local people to build on their existing strengths to prepare for disasters and adapt to climate change, it provides practical guidance for identifying high-risk groups ...  and how to work with them effectively. Congratulations on a great resource.' 

Maria Tiimon, Pacific Outreach Officer, Pacific Calling Partnership

£12.95 /€19.95 / $25.95 | January 2013, 192 pages, paperback | ISBN: 978-1-85339-786-8

Also available in French and Spanish

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Savings Groups at the Frontier

Edited by Candace Nelson

Savings Groups at the Frontier explores the issues that will shape the future of savings groups. What are the costs, required inputs, and anticipated outreach of these groups? How does replication take place? How sustainable are the groups? Is it feasible to integrate financial and non-financial services? Are linkages to the formal system desirable? What is the impact of groups on members and their households? How can performance be managed? Not surprisingly, these issues mirror the preoccupation of the pioneers of microcredit. However, this book addresses them, not from the perspective of the financial institution, but in support of group members and savers who are managing their own financial services. 

£16.95 /€25.95 / $33.95 | January 2013, 168 pages, paperback | ISBN: 978-1-85339-777-6

Farmers' Choice

Edited by Helene Bie Lilleor and ulrik Lund-Sorenson

Farmers’ Choice outlines the RIPAT intervention, and examines how effective it has been. This evaluation of RIPAT brings together the analyses of economists, agricultural scientists, and anthropologists who studied the impact, implementation, adoption, and spread of the programme approaches. They asked: what has been the impact on poverty and food security among participating farmers? How effective has the implementation of the programme been? Which elements of the programme have been most enthusiastically and enduringly adopted? This book relates the sometimes unexpected outcomes and benefits of the programme among the farmers and their children.

£18.95 /€28.95 / $37.95 | March 2013, 168 pages, paperback | ISBN: 978-1-85339-775-2

Aid, NGOs and the Realities of Women's Lives

A perfect storm

Edited by Tina Wallace and Fenella Porter

Aid, NGOs and the Realities of Women's Lives explores how international NGOs are navigating changes that challenge their role and legitimacy, their values, and their overall purpose. The writers explore alternative ways of conceptualizing development, and of bringing about improvements for the most marginalized and increasingly ‘unheard’ women. The book calls for a re-examination of theories about change, and a re-focus on ideas of complexity and feminism and on learning from past NGO experience.

Aid organizations have their origins in a desire to help the world’s poorest and most marginalized people – but are they reaching these people? Several factors are coming together that put pressure on non-government organizations (NGOs) working in international development: the economic crisis, the growing conditionality of aid, and increased competition for funding between NGOs. This creates ‘a perfect storm’ driven by a new language of aid, policies and procedures established in Europe and USA and leaving poor women behind. 

£17.95 /€26.95 / $35.95 | April 2013, 256 pages, paperback | ISBN: 978-1-85339-779-0

 

Who Counts?

The power of particpatory statistics

Edited by Jeremy Holland with an afterword by Robert Chambers

Who Counts? seeks to provide impetus for a step change in the adoption and mainstreaming of participatory statistics within international development practice. The time has come for participatory statistics to be recognised as the first and best option for a “win win” approach to data generation and analysis. Participatory statistics have come of age in a methodologically pluralistic world. In recent years participatory research has established its credentials as an approach – with an accompanying set of tools – in which local people themselves generate statistics.

‘This is a timely compilation of ground-breaking work which adds up to a powerful agenda for transformation. This book shows how we can quantify the qualitative, build the active agency of excluded groups and generate participatory statistics that have greater rigour and legitimacy than most conventional statistics.’ David Archer, Head of Programmes, ActionAid

£12.95 /€19.95 / $25.95 | April 2013, 234 pages, paperback | ISBN: 978-1-85339-772-1

The Complete Manual of Small-scale Food Processing

Peter Fellows

Small-scale food processing is important worldwide. For individual processors, it is highly accessible as a start-up business, especially for women; farmers and fishermen can readily diversify into processing to increase their incomes; and high added-value enables processors to earn an income from relatively small scales of production. For policy makers: small-scale food processing can create employment , increase food security and improve nutritional standards. 

Written by an experienced food technologist and author, this book provides comprehensive technical and business information on all aspects of small-scale food processing in a single text in simple language suitable for the non-specialist and also for people who have English as a second language. Sections of the manual may also be useful to policy makers, programme managers and others in government or third sector organizations, who wish to use food processing to promote economic development or to improve food security.

‘This book is truly a “complete manual of small-scale food processing”.  What makes it unique is that it is based on several case studies from all around the world.  It has worked for many such small-scale food processors and will continue to work for others.  This is a MUST read.

Peggy Oti-Boateng (PhD), Senior Programme Specialist for Science and Technology, UNESCO Office in Nairobi, KENYA. 
 

£29.95 /€44.95 / $59.95 | July 2013, 580 pages, paperback | ISBN: 978-1-85339-766-0

 

Poor People's Energy Outlook 2013

Energy for earning a living

Practical Action

As a contribution to creating a new energy narrative, the Poor people’s energy outlook (PPEO) highlights what matters to poor people. It prioritizes their perspectives and those of practitioners working with them. PPEO 2013, the third in the series, focuses on delivering energy at community level, illustrating the difference that improved energy services and supply can make to health, education and infrastructure, including access to water, and street lighting. The report makes the case for energy for community services; encouraging greater investment in, and integration of, this often neglected area of energy provision.

‘Life without energy is death. This book is a “must read” for all development partners, individuals, governments, and NGOs that want a better and safer world.’

Dr Sam Agbo, Head of Health and HIV, Save the Children 

£12.95 /€19.95 / $25.95 | April 2013, 108 pages, paperback | ISBN: 978-1-85339-789-9