This Foresight Project, led by Sir John Beddington, has considered disasters resulting from natural hazards in developing countries.  Speakers will give presentations on the report's key findings.

Topics include:

• how science and evidence could help in understanding evolving future disaster risks
• how those risks may best be anticipated
• the practical actions that could best be taken in risk reduction

Is ‘development’ a helpful term to explain poverty reduction efforts to a wider public or does it create a barrier to understanding? Is there still such a thing as a good development story or do NGOs, think tanks and others involved in communicating global issues need to look beyond ‘big D development’ in order to better access mainstream media?

These are the central questions to be discussed by a panel of experts who will examine the current scope for successful coverage of development and offer their insights into how to best get the message across in the modern media landscape.

This year’s Regional Economic Outlook for Africa titled “Maintaining Growth in an Uncertain World” was launched at the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings in Tokyo. Our panel will present the findings of this report and discuss its implications for Africa and the rest of the world.

At the end of this month the UN’s High-Level Panel on the post-MDG agenda begins a three day meeting in London, hosted by the three co-chairs, UK Prime Minster David Cameron, President Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia and President Yudhoyono of Indonesia.  On the eve of that meeting Oxfam, Business Fights Poverty (BFP) and ODI are bringing together three of the key constituencies that inform this debate - business, NGOs and academia - to discuss what they would like the High-Level Panel to recommend.