Rethinking Development Podcast

Daniel Kobei is the Founder and Executive Director of the Ogiek Peoples' Development Program, a Kenyan NGO working to secure human and land rights for the Indigenous Ogiek community as well as other Indigenous peoples across Kenya and Africa. Daniel represents Indigenous peoples under the umbrella of the International Indigenous Forum for Biodiversity and the Collaborative Partnership for Wildlife Management, set by the Convention of Biological Diversity. Daniel has been promoting the restoration of the Mau Forest Complex through Ogiek community involvement as a forest dwelling, hunter gathering community. Daniel helped lead the Ogiek to winning an eight year legal battle over land and human rights abuses at the African Court on Human and People's Rights in 2017. But four years later, the Ogiek community are still waiting for the implementation of that legal judgment.

We speak about:

• the violation of the rights of the Ogiek community by the Kenyan state
• resisting forced evictions & dispossession of ancestral lands
• wining an 8 year long court case at the African Court on Human and People's Rights
• the support of regional and international Indigenous rights groups
• the undermining of Indigenous conservation knowledge
• the impact of climate change in the Mau Forest complex - and much more!

Daniel joins us from Nairobi, Kenya.

Dr. Sabina Faiz Rashid is the Dean of the BRAC James P. Grant School of Public Health at BRAC University in Bangladesh. Dr. Rashid specializes in ethnographic and qualitative research with a focus on urban slum communities and marginalized groups. She's particularly interested in examining the impact of structural and intersectional factors on the ability of those populations to realize their health rights and access to services. In 2008, she founded the Center for Gender, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, and in 2013, co-founded the Center for Urban Equity and Health. Both focus on research, capacity building and influencing program designs and policies in Bangladesh.

We speak about:

• BRAC’s approach to development
• co-thinking and co-creating with communities
• unpacking assumptions about the ‘Global South’
• solution-based thinking
• competency based learning
• building a youth friendly research culture
• decolonizing global health - and much more!

She joins us from Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Giorgos Kallis is an ecological economist, political ecologist, and Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology in the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies. His research is motivated by a quest to cross conceptual divides between the social and the natural domains, with particular focus on the political-economic roots of environmental degradation and its uneven distribution along lines of power, income, and class. His current work explores the hypothesis of sustainable degrowth as a solution to the dual economic and ecological crisis. Giorgos is the author of the books 'Limits' and 'The Case for Degrowth'.

We speak about:

• his intellectual journey and working across disciplines
• the history of the hegemony of growth
• degrowth as one critique of capitalist economies
• 3 layers of articulating degrowth
• the climate crisis
• degrowth in high income countries vs. low income countries
• collective action and international solidarities
• engaging with a pluriverse of alternatives to capitalist growth - and much more!

He joins us from Barcelona, Spain.

Mahrukh 'Maya' Hasan is as a designer, researcher and strategic advisor who helps social impact organizations build joyful, equitable and innovative teams. She's the Founder and Director of Azura Labs, a social design and research studio that builds the capacity of international NGOs and UN agencies serving communities in Sub Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia. Last March, Maya also founded the Fearless Project, a diversity, equity and inclusion firm, which aims to champion trust, belonging and joy in the social impact sector.
We speak about:

• entry barriers in the sector
• research ethics and design justice
• moving beyond the binary of quantitative and qualitative data
• diversity, equity and inclusion work
• the culture of fear amongst leaders
• emotional agility
• learning from other sectors - and much more!

For our Season 4 finale, we share a compilation of clips from our past 50+ episodes!