The recently published Greening Aid analyses trends in development assistance during the pre- and post-Rio Earth Summit period. The authors have compiled one of the largest datasets of foreign aid ever assembled. By evaluating the likely environmental impacts of more than 400,000 development projects by more than 50 donors to over 170 recipient countries between 1970 and 2001, they seek to answer three central research questions:

1. Which donor governments spend the most on foreign assistance for the environment and why?
2. Why do some donor governments delegate the allocation and implementation of environmental aid to multilateral agencies when they could simply allocate it themselves?
3. And why do some recipient countries receive more environmental aid than others?

Greening Aid explains major trends and shifts over the past two decades. The report ranks donors according to their performance, and offers case studies that compare and contrast donors and types of environmental aid.  This meeting will give the authors their first opportunity in the UK to discuss their analysis.

Chatham House hosted this international meeting to discuss alternative models and finance mechanisms for the sustainable management and conservation of the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo on 17-18 December 2007. ODI Researchers Cecilia Luttrell, Leo Peskett and Kate Schreckenberg gave a presentation on 'The development impacts of community forestry and the implications of carbon financing'

The Institute of Development Studies (IDS), the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) are co-hosting a series of seven public meetings which will examine current and future directions for research and policy in six key areas of development. Cecilia Luttrell and Leo Peskett gave a presentation on 'Global Climate Change: Research and Challanges from a Development Perspective'

International development assistance is increasingly concerned with good governance. Without good governance, countries are fighting a losing battle to reconcile poverty reduction with environmental objectives. Complicating matters, good governance encompasses a range of issues which can be intangible and hard to measure.

However, perhaps more than any other sector, the forest sector has long struggled with - and thereby given life to - a range of these issues. Experience in the forest sector clearly demonstrates how a combination of inappropriate regulation and weak governance can erode the assets of the poor and increase their vulnerability. What lessons can we learn from the pioneering governance reforms in the forest sector and how can we apply them to promote wider gains in good governance and pro-poor change?

• Breathing life into "good governance" – what does experience with natural resources tell us about the role of donors? (7 March 2002). Speaker: Hilary Benn, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development, DfID
• Is Participation a Poor Excuse for Democracy? Lessons from the Forest Sector (12 March 2002).
  Speakers: Jon Lindsay, FAO Development Law Service, on 'Is 'participation' a poor excuse for democracy? A lawyer’s Perspective'; Timothé Fometé, University of Dschang, Cameroon & member of National Team for Cameroon’s Forest & Environment Sector Programme, on 'Forests and democratic development in Cameroon'.
• Does decentralisation harm the poor? Lessons from forestry in Indonesia, and West and Central Africa (22 March 2002)
  Speakers: Dr Jesse Ribot, World Resources Institute, on ‘Is Decentralisation Good for the Environment? Some Reflections on Power Transfer and Institutional Choice’; Dr John McCarthy, Van Vollenhoven Institute, Leiden University, on ‘Is decentralisation good for the environment and poverty? Lessons from the forestry sector in Indonesia’.
• Bad governance: can global environmental policy make a difference? (27 March 2002).
  Speaker: Dr Gill Shepherd, ODI
• Rethinking Good Governance: What can the forestry sector tell us? (26 April 2002)
  Jim Douglas, Senior Forestry Adviser at the World Bank; Roger Wilson, Chief Governance Adviser at the Department for International Development (DFID); Jeff Sayer, recently retired as foundation Director-General of the Centre for International Forestry (CIFOR), and now Senior Adviser with WWF International; Richard Tarasofsky, Senior Fellow, Ecologic - Institute for International and European Environmental Policy, Berlin.