About IDRC
A Crown corporation, we support leading thinkers who advance knowledge and solve practical development problems. We provide the resources, advice, and training they need to implement and share their solutions with those who need them most. In short, IDRC increases opportunities—and makes a real difference in people’s lives.
Working with our development partners, we multiply the impact of our investment and bring innovations to more people in more countries around the world. We offer fellowships and awards to nurture a new generation of development leaders.
What we do
IDRC funds research in developing countries to create lasting change on a large scale.
To make knowledge a tool for addressing pressing challenges, we
- provide developing-country researchers financial resources, advice, and training to help them find solutions to local problems.
- encourage knowledge sharing with policymakers, researchers, and communities around the world.
- foster new talent by offering fellowships and awards.
- strive to get new knowledge into the hands of those who can use it.
In doing so, we contribute to Canada’s foreign policy, complementing the work of Global Affairs Canada, and other government departments and agencies.
Members:
Resources
Displaying 166 - 170 of 324Fighting desertification and poverty : it's the same war [Arabic version]
The people of the Sahel — that huge region stretching along the southern edge of the Sahara Desert — are still striving to recover from the fallout of the terrible droughts that have afflicted the area since 1973. Drought has shattered the momentum of socioeconomic development in Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal. According to researchers with Burkino Faso’s Institut de l’environnement et de recherches agricoles, “Rural men and women are now struggling to survive in a land that is exhausted, denuded, desiccated, and swept away by the wind and water.”
Common land : commercialization vs conservation
Across South Asia, many rural people use common land to harvest naturally-growing plants, grow crops and feed their livestock. Increasingly this activity is being commercialized as farmers move to sell the produce they obtain. Despite the importance of this development to village people, its overall effect is uncertain and there are fears that it will damage the environment.
Maps, not guns, resolve resource conflicts in Cambodia : researchers and villagers create a new model for resource policy in defending traditional land rights
Uncontrolled development was threatening to destroy the forest environment
and the traditional way of life of the hill people of Ratanakiri. Researchers
worked with the villagers to produce unique maps and resource use plans
that convinced the government of the people’s traditional resource use and
management rights, and eventually set an example for inclusion in new land
tenure legislation for the nation.
Growing better cities
The United Nations predicts that over the next 25 years nearly all population growth will be in the cities of the developing world. At current rates, 60% of the world’s total population will live in cities by 2030. As the cities grow, so does the number of urban poor. Unemployment, hunger, and malnutrition are commonplace. In the big city, most of any cash income the poor might bring home goes to feeding themselves and staying alive; any food that does not have to be bought is a bonus.