"Arab Development Challenges Report 2011 - Towards the Developmental State in the Arab Region"

June 12, 2012 | 15:00 h - 16:30 h

The Center for Development Research (ZEF) and the United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) jointly organize a seminar series on Risk and Uncertainty for Sustainable Development.

 

The next lecture of the joint seminar series will be on:

“Arab Development Challenges Report 2011 - Towards the Developmental State in the Arab Region”

This recent report is an influential study with bold recommendations for the Arab Region. Download the report here.

 

Speaker: Mohammad Pournik (Poverty and MDGs Practice Leader at UNDP, Cairo)

 

Chair: Joachim von Braun, ZEF-Director

 

Time and place:

Tuesday, June 12 2012

3 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

at ZEF (ground floor conference room)

 

About the speaker:Mohammad Pournik is the Poverty Practice Leader at the UNDP Regional Centre for Arab States in Cairo. He is responsible for provision of advisory services in economic and social policy, human development and MDGs, inter-alia through production and dissemination of knowledge products. He has expertise in the following areas: Political economy of development, project management, assessing development results, community driven development, heterodox macroeconomics and micro finance. For most of his professional life in the United Nations system, Mohammad Pournik worked on issues pertaining to political economy of sustainable development and poverty reduction. He joined UNDP Iran in 1984 and has since worked in Laos, New York, Nepal, Sudan and Yemen.

In this seminar series we address opportunities, risks and uncertainties for development. Uncertainty, i.e. the unknown unknowns, is a particular challenge. Risk and uncertainty have become a focal topic among development researchers, policy makers and practitioners as worldwide, economy and ecology have been assailed by a series of global crises: financial crisis, high and volatile food and oil price, and/or climate change. These crises present threats to development and to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The understanding, mitigating and controlling of risk and uncertainty is far from being understood. The seminar series forms a forum for agenda setting and discussion on related themes with leading experts in this field of research and policy.