The spring issue of DAI's Developments newsletter is now available.

Leading off the issue, Ed Rackley reflects on the “high-stakes moment” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and describes the programs DAI is implementing to address the governance and security challenges in this troubled part of the world on behalf of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID).

Environmentally sustainable development and climate change emerge as powerful themes in the rest of the issue:

• Steve Smith, who leads DAI’s technical work on enterprise development, discusses efforts to promote the sustainable home furnishings industry in Indonesia—an effort that will be crucial to many local firms in light of legislation in the United States and Europe designed to restrict the flow of illegally harvested wood and wood products.


• David Nicholson and Nathan Kennedy introduce InfoSpring.org, an interactive Q&A website launched by The Development Practitioners Forum with an initial focus on sustainable agriculture, climate change, natural resources management, and food security.


• Krista Baptista and Sarah Schmidt explore recent innovations on FRAMEweb, a USAID website run by the Capitalizing Knowledge, Connecting Communities (CK2C) project and dedicated to collecting and sharing knowledge related to natural resources management. “Climate change, in particular, has emerged as a thematic focal point for the site,” the authors write, “which is creating a venue where practitioners interested in adaptation and mitigation can find one another, share information, learn from previous efforts, and get up to speed with what is happening around the world.”


• One element of the climate change debate is renewable energy. In her article, Lara Goldmark describes how a value chain study of the solar energy industry in Morocco led to the creation of a network of solar-energy installers that brings together previously isolated microenterprises into a consortium that can profitably engage with national and international investors.


• Also on the subject of renewables, Patrick Doyle, DAI’s Technical Area Manager for Energy and Climate Change, and Khalidah Jaafar, an Iraqi engineer, reflect on the factors that make Iraq an ideal site for investment in large-scale solar power.


• And in the DAIdeas publication that accompanies this issue, Doyle then teams up with Tom Erdmann, CK2C’s Chief of Party, to analyze the potential for using carbon emissions markets and forestry credits to fund forestry projects.

In other articles in this issue, DAI Pakistan Managing Director Zahid Elahi outlines the development challenges confronting his country, Mehreen Tanvir reports on the highly successful debut of DAI’s new Center for Development Excellence, and Jeffrey Straka describes the Community-Based Avian Influenza Control Project’s “integrated communal-commercial approach” to controlling avian influenza in Indonesia.  

Finally, in his CEO's Desk column, President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Boomgard takes stock of an extremely turbulent few months for DAI project employees, a time that has seen great personal sacrifice, tragic loss of life, and inspiring acts of bravery and commitment. In “saluting the people of development,” at DAI and across the development community, Boomgard concludes that we owe these development professionals a “debt of gratitude.”

To view Developments online, click here. To view DAIdeas, click here. For print copies or to be added to our mailing list, contact Marcia Liu at marcia_liu@dai.com.