IIED

International Institute for Environment and Development

IIED
1971
United Kingdom
English

IIED mission statement is:
“IIED seeks to make the world a fairer and more sustainable place, in alliance with like-minded partners. Acting a catalyst, broker and facilitator, we seek to add voice to poorer and more vulnerable groups to ensure their interests are heard in decision-making, and can bring about progressive change”.

Camilla Toulmin
80-86 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8NH, UK
+44 (0)20 3463 7399
+44 (0)20 35149055

IIED is an independent international research organisation, working to promote more sustainable and equitable global development and specialized in linking local to global. As they say: “In Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Central and South America, the Middle East and the Pacific, we work with some of the world’s most vulnerables people to ensure they have a say in the policy arenas that most closely affect them — from village councils to international conventions”.

IIED provides, also through alliances with others, expertise in achieving sustainable development at local, national, and global levels.
Its primary objectives are:

  • Achieve a robust, ambitious and fair deal for the post 2012 Kyoto agreement on addressing climate change
  • Bring management of environment centre-stage in policy, practice, aid architecture and delivery of the MDGs
  • Strengthen local rights to land and natural resources, and improve local governance to protect vulnerable groups from dispossession
  • Improve water and sanitation, and strengthen secure tenure for the urban poor, building on local organisations and their priorities
  • Re-design markets to bring benefits for poverty reduction, environmental protection and sustainable livelihoods

Creation: Year 1971

Organization Type: Policy Research Institute

 

Activities/Main areas of work:

IIED organizes its work by focusing on five big issues:

  • Climate Change whose main aims include: improving the understanding of climate change impacts for developing countries including both policy makers and poor groups; improving the decision making capacities in vulnerable developing countries to cope with impacts of climate change; improving the negotiating capacities of developing countries in the international climate change negotiations through analysis of issues relevant to them; improving the sustainable livelihoods opportunities of poor communities in developing countries in light of climate change impacts.
  • Governance, whose aim is to provide advice and assistance to governments, inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations internationally also through the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD). FIELD is a working subsidiary of IIED and works closely alongside on a range of research activity.
  • Human Settlements, that seeks to combine reduced urban poverty reduction and improved housing conditions with promoting good governance and more ecologically sustainable patterns of urban development and of rural-urban linkages. This is achieved by engaging in policy research. The work also includes evaluation, technical and policy assistance, seminars, publications and training.
  • Natural Resources whose overall aim is building capacity and promoting informed decision-making in communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. IIED’s priority is on local control and management of natural resources and other ecosystem services. In this area of work IIED explores a number of specific research themes such as: biodiversity and conservation; empowerment and land rights; food and agriculture; forestry; water and ecosystems.
  • Sustainable Markets where IIED’s efforts are to ensure that markets contribute to positive social, environmental, and economic outcomes. The group brings together IIED’s work on Business & Sustainable Development, Market Structure, Environmental Economics, Trade and Investment, Tourism, and Mining.

Coverage:
Global

Main beneficiaries of IIED work are partners in Africa, Latin America, Asia and elsewhere, including NGOs, research organisations, CBOs, producers’ associations, training institutions and donor agencies.

− Poverty and Conservation Learning Group (PCLG)
− Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI)
− Latin American Center for Rural Development (Rimisp)
−Up in Smoke
− the Ring
−The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

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