Rating and review systems aren't new. They are the backbone of websites like Tripadvisor, Ebay and Amazon, to name a few. Amazon's Founder and CEO, Jeff Bezoz has argued that these websites don't just succeed because they have the rating and review systems – they succeed because they allow negative feedback as well. In the early days, Amazon was under pressure to delete negative customer reviews. But he took the view that customers would not come to Amazon to buy products if they didn't trust Amazon, and knowing that negative feedback was displayed was critical to building that trust. Now that sellers know that they can get negative feedback, they have adjusted their strategies and improved their performance. They no longer put pressure on Amazon to delete comments, yet continue to advertise through Amazon.

My friend has had a similar experience with Airbnb. Initially, she was worried that she would get negative reviews from her guests because the water pressure in her flat wasn't good. But, rather than wait for negative reviews, she decided to be upfront about the water problems when she welcomed the new guests. Now, all she gets is good reviews on her flat once her guests leave. By being open about the good and the bad, she's now making a tidy little sum to pay for her holidays.

A few days ago I wrote a blog post about knowledge sharing, a topic that Indonesia has put on the agenda of the Global Partnership. Indonesia wants to stimulate the international community to find innovative ways to scale up and make knowledge sharing (known in some circles as technical assistance) even more effective in delivering development.

Sharing knowledge on health in northern Nigeria. Picture: Lindsay Mgbor/DFID, 2012

Since I wrote the post, and discussing it with others, I've been wondering whether, in many ways knowledge sharing has marketplace-like properties – as experts have a clear product, their knowledge. In her 2010 Ted Talk, Noreena Hertz laments a number of problems with relying on experts. But whether or not we like experts, the fact is, that like many of the products Amazon sold or my friends flat, there's an information gap (or, in economic speak, an asymmetry). Experts might have a view about good they are, but those trying to get the knowledge – such as government officials in developing countries – can't easily assess their quality. Experts themselves also have no real idea how good they are in comparison to others. And there’s no "central list" of who are the best global experts on different policy areas like tax, or the environment.

If a lack of information about the quality of knowledge shared or technical assistance is a problem in development, then the system of inviting open feedback and review may be useful to emulate – creating an open marketplace for experts from all over the world and rating them online, based on real feedback from the users, particularly officials from developing country governments. Experts could even be organised in "hubs" for different policy areas, such as food security or green growth.

Does anything exist like this in development? I haven't come across it. The South South Opportunity website has a great set of case studies with lessons learnt for each, but it doesn't quite get to the heart of who was behind each project, or set out actual feedback.  Perhaps its because there are barriers to opening up such information, such as data protection or competition rules. That said, barriers might be overcome by looking in more depth at what Airbnb and Amazon have done to overcome similar issues. A truly "trusted, collaborative marketplace" might be well worth exploring, even if people are initially a little scared of negative feedback.

I've recently been discussing the topic of "knowledge sharing" with colleagues from Indonesia. Wikipedia is probably the best known mechanism for knowledge sharing around the world. But, in development circles, knowledge sharing refers to a particular way that many emerging economies – from China to Colombia –support other developing countries. In the UK we call this type of support "technical assistance" or "capacity building". Basically, it's when a government official or consultant from one country shares information with another government official about successful projects, policy or legislation. It can take place as a visit, a conference, a series of meetings, or even a secondment from a week to months. An example recently launched in the UK is "IFUSE".

Emerging economies tend to focus the knowledge they share around their own experience of development, and in this sense, knowledge sharing is, alongside loans for infrastructure and other activities, a major component of what is known as "south-south" cooperation. Institutions like the World Bank also offer technical assistance alongside their loans.

Government officials in Kenya share knowledge about health. Picture: DFID

I've been discussing this topic because at the most recent meeting of the Steering Committee for the Global Partnership, Indonesia's Minister of Planning made a case for trying to scale up knowledge sharing and make it an even more effective way of delivering development.

Many problems have been identified with technical assistance in the past. But, as this paper illustrates, it's hard to find real practical solutions to address the problems. Added to this, the view is often expressed, though not necessarily substantiated, that south-south forms of technical assistance can probably overcome the problems.

So I've been wondering whether the Wikipedia experience regarding its potential competitors can help.

Wikipedia's founders probably felt that there wasn't enough knowledge sharing going on. Encyclopaedias had limited distribution and were often expensive. In addition, the barriers to entry were high. There weren't many people contributing to the few well-known editions of encyclopaedias around. So, the founders did two things. First, they created a free product that was open to anyone who had the internet. Second, and more importantly, they reversed the role of "gatekeepers". In the traditional print profession, there are usually editors who make sure only the best pieces get published. Wikipedia reversed this completely. It let everything get published but behind the scenes introduced a handful of voluntary experts who unofficially made sure the important pieces were correct. By reversing the usual dynamic of "gatekeepers" and making barriers to entry as low as possible, Wikipedia drew on the largest possible knowledge base while maintaining an incredibly high standard.

How might this apply to knowledge sharing in development circles? Well, if scarcity of knowledge sharing is similarly a problem (though I'm not entirely sure it is), the Wikipedia experience suggests that scaling it up will not be as simple as devoting more money to it. This is because – as with general knowledge – "content is king". The content of south-south forms of cooperation is experience. Hence, I'm not sure devoting more money would help. But making sure the barriers are as low as possible for people with experience to share their knowledge might help. So the question is how to make existing knowledge based on experience have a wider reach and last into the future. In this case, creating a Wikipedia-like tool for development work or some sort of tool to do more e-learning might be useful. ODI and SAIIA have, in the past, suggested that the G20 should explore something like this.

Indeed, some tools already exist. The World Bank recently launched an Open Knowledge Repository to consolidate thousands of its books, reports and research, allowing the public to distribute, reuse and build on its work. It hosts discussion forums on topics such as jobs. UNDP similarly facilitates 23 global Communities of Practice networks for development exports to support, learn and benefit from different experiences in different locations and environments. These tools may well need more awareness and support to scale them up, or they may need more of a radical re-think, like Wikipedia's competitors did.

Wikipedia flourished because it filled a clear gap and related itself to everyday products and problems. If we're going to fulfil Indonesia's aspiration to make knowledge sharing in development really successful, a first step might be to learn from Wikipedia's experience.

I had gone along to the seminar to hear more about the rationale for the UK's plans to promote transparency by governments and companies at the G8 Summit in June this year. I wanted to know whether the panellists thought transparency could really reduce poverty in developing countries.

During the seminar, one of the panellists Paul Collier, an economist most famous for his book The Bottom Billion (though my personal favourite is Wars, Guns and Votes) gave an unusual explanation for why he thought transparency was so critical to poverty reduction.

He began by noting that many developing countries, particularly in Africa, impose high trade tariffs, duties and other costs at their ports. This is why my dad had to rush to Kenya. However, Collier explained that this isn't just because the countries don't like trade or want to protect their local industries. He said it often comes down to the fact that trade taxes are easiest to track and collect compared to other types of tax, such as income and value-added taxes. Many countries have a narrow tax base, which in turn creates an incentive to rely on trade tariffs and duties to meet their spending needs.

The coast is clear at Kenya's Mombasa port, credit: NazarethCollege, 2009

Collier therefore suggested, rather than pushing such countries to reduce their tariffs, that they should be helped to raise revenues from other sources. And a key means could be more transparency by companies.

Many large companies often have complex structures. These exist for many good management reasons but they can also be associated with tax avoidance. Though not illegal, aggressive tax avoidance indicates some effort to circumvent norms and rules put in place by countries for social benefits. Complex, opaque company structures can also be associated with wrongdoing, such as corruption and money-laundering (also known as "illicit flows").

Coordinated action by G8 countries to increase transparency around the ownership of companies could help reduce the potential for tax evasion and wrongdoing. Coordinated action could also help identify when companies aren't paying enough taxes. This will mean that developing countries have the chance to collect more company taxes and reduce their incentive to rely on trade-related revenues. The UK Prime Minister argued in a speech in Davos earlier this year that making tax more fair and predictable can be good for business – creating a level playing field and providing governments with more tools such as cheaper trade to enable the private sector to grow.

My colleagues in HMT, BIS and DFID are currently considering, along with the UK's G8 partners and other stakeholders, the best mechanism for achieving greater transparency by companies and governments – for example, how information should be gathered and to whom it should be made available. If you have any views, please set them out in the comments below!

It's worth also noting that over the weekend, DFID's Secretary of State Justine Greening announced that the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation will, at its first-ever Ministerial later this year, aim to build consensus beyond the G8 on actions to help developing countries raise more tax.

In the meantime, I'm hoping my dad manages to pick up his goods at the port in Kenya soon.  And I'm hoping there will be more seminars to help me and other policy makers better understand how agreements by the G8 and Global Partnership can really make a difference to development.

But these two big announcements were not just about a specific UK mindset. They are part of a broader shift that is taking place globally. It is the shift from "aid effectiveness" to "development effectiveness", which underpinned the establishment of the new Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation just over a year ago in Busan, Korea. The shift can be expressed more simply as a move away from concentrating on aid alone to address poverty reduction. It brings in a new focus on policy – for example trade and investment policy – and its effect on development.

A sceptical reader might wonder whether this shift is taking place simply because traditional donors such as the UK are under domestic pressure to cut their aid budgets. That pressure certainly exists, but in the UK the aid budget is being maintained. This year, the UK government will meet the 0.7% aid target, an ambition dating back to the 1960s. Meeting 0.7% is critical – because aid has a very necessary role, particularly in fragile and conflict-afflicted states where governments may not even be able to prioritise gathering other sources of finance for development – such as collecting taxes from citizens or business.

The fact is that the shift needs to take place because of changes in the economics of poverty. Ten years or so ago, reducing poverty was in many ways simpler than it is now. At the time, most of the world's poorest people lived in low income countries such as Kenya. They lived in rural areas, and aid was one of the largest financial flows globally. Aid was the major tool to help address the needs of the poorest people around the world.

A decade on this is no longer the case. As Andy Sumner, a development economist at Kings College London, explains in this podcast, the majority of poor people no longer live in low-income countries. They now mostly live in middle income countries. In these countries, aid represents a declining proportion of budgets and overall income. Revenues from internationally traded commodities, such as oil and copper in countries like Nigeria and Zambia, far exceed aid flows. Many developing country governments are collecting more and more personal income and consumption taxes. Kenya's tax receipts are equivalent to almost 20% of its GDP. Remittances are rising globally. Aid from the UK to Pakistan in 2011 was just over £210m, compared to the £627m sent from migrants in the UK to Pakistan.

This changed global setting, where all poor people no longer live in the poorest countries, and aid is no longer their main flow of finance, creates the need for a non-aid-based development relationship. But what should this look like? How can it take place?

Some economists, such as Acemoglu and Robinson, suggest that a non-aid-based development relationship is about ensuring good governance in low and middle-income countries. Others say it's about ensuring that governments enable the private sector enough to stimulate jobs and entrepreneurship. The latter was a major feature of Greening's speech at the London Stock Exchange on Monday, 11 March – but both approaches are important.

But the shift of poverty to middle income countries also brings with it a more direct role for governments such as London. Governments can work to make positive shifts in their domestic policy – in areas such as trade and investment. Though there is a great deal of evidence to gather on this, ultimately, these shifts are likely to be more transformational and sustainable for poverty reduction in a middle-income country such as India than aid, and can complement the good governance and private sector agendas.

That said, working towards more "development friendly" domestic policies is not an easy agenda. One of my first jobs in government was working on the economic effects that domestic British and EU farming policies had on development. The specific commodities I worked on – sugar, wheat, corn and soya – were critical to the lives of poor people all over the world. Yet years later, the battle over agricultural policy rages on in international forums such as the World Trade Organization. It is very difficult to change the status quo.

But the more that countries successfully reduce aid dependency, the more the pressure will build for synergistic policy relationships. Concentrating on aid alone will no longer be sufficient for development. And aid itself will have more impact and value for money where, for example, trade, tax and transparency policies are all pushing in the same positive direction.

The G8 and the new UK-India relationship represent the start of a new strategic agenda for effective development partnerships that reflect the more complex setting we now live in. My hope is that these first steps will be successful and extend to other policy areas as we move into the post-2015 world, including through the post-Busan Global Partnership.

This blog was first publised on the Guardian Development Professionals Network.

This "new reality" hit me this week when I participated in a flagship event called SPRINT13, organised by the UK's Government Digital Service (GDS). GDS are a new team that have embarked on a huge set of projects with a range of government departments. The aim of these projects is to go beyond providing open data to make what government does more responsive to citizens, and cheaper.

The old has left town and a new digital reality is coming to you – January 2012

For instance, as I heard at the conference, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is planning, in less than two years, to administer all support to UK farmers online. This will slash costs at the same time as breaking up the work so that small and medium companies can bid to create and manage the IT system for the payments. Generally, as outlined in this Economist article, transaction costs can be brought down by 20 times if departments “go digital” rather than use paper, by 30 times if they go digital rather than use post, and by 50 times if their online services replace face-to-face transactions.  There are many other examples on the GDS blog, all equally inspiring.

All this inspiration got me wondering to what extent DFID incorporates these ideas when we work with governments in developing countries.

We all know the stats – the fact that Africa's mobile phone market has expanded so much it's become larger than the EU or US markets with over 650 million subscribers. Hundreds of new broadband cables have been laid across African countries, as this presentation outlines. This infographic provides a great illustration of this transformation, and there is more up-to-date data in this report from the African Development Bank, African Union and World Bank.

The transformation is something governments in developing countries recognise. Take Kenya, which has a multi-pronged digital strategy. Over 60 villages and schools are benefitting from digitisation, through an initiative known as "Pasha" Centres. A new "sillicon valley" of East Africa called "Konza" is being built. Government data is increasingly being published online. Such changes are happening elsewhere too, and some of the top global apps that help reduce poverty have benefited from UK aid.

At the same time, there's a long way to go.  According to World Bank data, here in the UK, 82% of people have access to the internet. So it makes sense that the government is aiming for all of our services that handle over 100,000 transactions per year to be "digital by default" by 2015 - from making farm payments to collecting road taxes, to using the internet to update health records after treatment.  Only 12% of people in Sub-Saharan Africa currently have internet access – the rationale is not the same.  But it is also changing rapidly. A new form of satellite broadband is being developed to bring millions more online. Chinese and UK/France companies are partnering to launch a new browser, cleverly tailored to low-cost smartphones to provide quick access to very familiar apps like Facebook and Twitter in English and Arabic.  This will increase demand. The key, as with the changes GDS has made, is to make the technology "locally relevant" – keeping the citizen, the end user, in mind.

At SPRINT13, it slowly dawned on me that any government that doesn't keep up with this new digital reality will not only be left in the dark, it will also face mounting costs.

A few weeks ago, DFID launched our Digital Strategy, along with several other government departments, which outlines all the work we are doing to take on board this "new reality". Unlike James Bond, even if we work in remote places, we really don’t want to be difficult to reach.  In fact, we want your creative ideas on how going digital can help us do more for development. So please do feedback below!

Traditionally, the new year is a time for making new resolutions. Go on that new diet, start that exercise regime, enrol in that evening class you've been eyeing for a few months now. We've all been here before and January always starts with the best of intentions.

My main New Year's resolution is to get my finances in order – economists are notoriously bad at looking after their own money and I'm no exception! Apparently, trying to lose weight is the most popular New Year's resolution amongst Americans. Similar surveys may find the same in other countries.

But New Year is not just a time for individuals to put their best foot forward. It's also a time for countries and organisations to shape up. While weight loss might be popular for individuals, for countries and organisations working in development, one of the most popular 2013 resolutions is likely to be to increase transparency.

Is your organisation ready to open up and become more transparent in 2013? Picture: Yemi Adamolekun speaking about 'Enough is Enough Nigeria' at Open Up! Russell Watkins/DFID

The sad thing is that quite often, January best intentions end up fizzling out by May. There's a risk that, just like many of our individual resolutions, pledges on transparency could slip.

There are a few great articles with tips for keeping New Year's resolutions alive. Like this one from the Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights Team with 5 tips, or this from the Huffington Post with 10 tips. I won't go through all of them, but I did see some really useful parallels for countries or organisations interested in transparency.

Take Tips 3-6 from the HuffPo article. These were especially relevant for countries or organisations taking first steps towards transparency. They were about visualising goals, formalising and declaring them – ideally in public - and breaking them down into quantitative sub-goals and a plan, then tracking progress against that plan. Economist Dean Karlan calls this creating a "commitment contract", and cites several examples about how it can be used in development. It's exactly what the common transparency standard has been created to help organisations do. Countries or organisations from all over the world - be that UK, Brazil or Ghana – can focus on achieving the standard, create their own specific timetable for how they will get there, and publish it so that they can track their own progress and everyone can hold them to their own goals.

There were also tips relevant to countries and organisations already doing pretty well on transparency, such as DFID. Doing well is dangerous, as it's easy to become complacent. If one individual in DFID or another organisation is not transparent it may not matter too much, yet many individuals being opaque can add up to significant failure. How to avoid this? It's hard to coerce staff or punish them for not keeping up. So the best alternative is to keep reminding staff of their goals, focus on the great things that will happen when these goals are achieved, find ways to actively lock-in gains, and celebrate success. These are all crucial to avoid sliding back. 

We will need to do this in DFID. For example, in 2012, we were at the top of the Publish What You Fund Aid Transparency Index. This year, another organisation might get there. Whatever happens, the competition will provide a good incentive to DFID to keep progressing. Hence, we are planning to do more work to code aid data geographically so that people can see and show data that's relevant to a location anywhere in the world, and publish the data based on developing countries' budget definitions rather than what's relevant in the UK. Success in these will mean people in developing countries can better understand and illustrate through tools like infographics what UK aid is doing and have greater say over it. Success under the Aid Transparency Challenge which we launched at the end of 2012 will mean people can add up and understand how much UK aid, different non-governmental organisations or other organisations are administering. The Center for Global Development think-tank called this work a "game-changer".

New Year's resolutions are never easy to maintain, and I doubt that 2013 will be any easier. But the good news is that whether we're new starters or we've already been making progress, there are some simple tips we can use to maintain our best intentions. Let's use them all, for transparency's sake!

The song "Gangnam Style", made in Korea and sung in Korean, has gone to number 1 in the UK, number 2 in the US, and has broken the record for being the "most viewed" video on you tube, with over one billion views. It is also being parodied all over the world. There's my personal favourite -  a Ghanaian version, as well as a Nigerian-British version and a Saudi Arabian version. It's been used by Amnesty International and Anish Kapoor, an Indian-born British sculptor, to publicise the need for freedom of speech globally, following a ban of a separate Gangnam parody by the controversial Chinese Writer Ai Weiwei.

The origins of Gangham Style are themselves interesting. This article describes how the song has some relatively subversive messages about debt and inequality in Korea's society, which may well resonate in many other countries around the world.

However rebellious or relevant the message, the fact is that Korea is having a dramatic influence on the music industry. The world is changing. It' no longer just European or US artists dominating the world's music charts. Others are coming in too.

There's a similar phenomenon taking place in development. Korea's influence is being felt. Take climate change and green growth which I used to work on, and was the subject of negotiations earlier this month in Doha, Qatar. Korea was and is a major player in this arena. The country continues to spend 2% of GDP per year -that's over $20bn - on specific green growth measures. It has been the first country to set up a Global Green Growth Institute to help other countries follow its path. And one of the positive outcomes at Doha was that countries agreed that Korea should set up the new Green Climate Fund in the futuristic, eco-smart city of Songdo during the second half of 2013.

Promoting the Green Climate Fund, Gangnam Style

Korea has also influenced the area I now work on. Just over a year ago, Korea hosted a major conference in Busan, initially billed as focused on "aid effectiveness". As I've set out in a previous blog, aid effectiveness conferences had been held prior to this in Rome, Paris and Accra, but none of them had managed to gain the trust and involvement of countries such as China and India. Korea did. Partly as a result of actively bringing in these partners into the discussion, the Busan conference actively changed its focus on aid effectiveness to a focus on development effectiveness, which was a much wider and broader concept that countries such as China, Brazil and even countries like Colombia and Nigeria better recognised. Korea, and the wide range of countries it helped bring in, made a permanent impact.

Earlier this month, Justine Greening, DFID's Secretary of State, alongside ministers from Nigeria and Indonesia co-chaired a meeting to follow up that agreement in Busan. It was the first Steering Committee of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation. Korea was present, representing countries outside the EU that "provide" development cooperation, such as Australia or the Gulf States. As is clear to see in the videos of the meeting, Korea played a constructive role. Korea helped in deciding when the Steering Committee would next meet (in March and June/July next year) and agree plans for a bigger ministerial meeting in October 2013. Korea also helped address the vexing question of what change and success for development that the Partnership, now that it is formed, might deliver. In doing so, the Committee agreed to look at four to five initial topics, which they will be writing papers on in the coming weeks and will be shared and discussed with the international community. In my next few blog posts, I'll try to explain these topics, and what they might mean in terms of our real lives.

For now though, it's clear that Korea has and will continue to make an impact. That's a signal that the world is changing, and work on development is, rightly, changing along with it too. My hope is that we will build on Korea's achievements and look back on the Ministerial next year as ground-breaking too. Let's bring on the Gangnam Style!

So when I watched, just over ten days ago, three women ministers – DFID's Secretary of State Justine Greening, Planning Minister Armida Alisjahbana from Indonesia and Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala from Nigeria – co-chair a group of about the same size getting together for the first time, I was impressed. Of course, these ministers had chaired large groups before. And there are lots of guides out there about how to make every meeting matter. We all know the tips: make sure people come to the meetings prepared; make sure the room is set up so that it feels physically inclusive; have a clear agenda and vision for what you want to get out of the meeting; be open to new ideas, and be ready for detractors too.

Three women Ministers take charge of development effectiveness, 2012

In the case of last week's meeting, the first meeting of the Steering Committee of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, several people had been involved in making it matter. The Support Team, made up of officials from UNDP and the OECD, had worked really hard to write the key documents for the meeting and circulate them in good time. They, Nigerian and Indonesian officials and I had been working together to design a clear and stimulating agenda. The EBRD, where the meeting was being hosted, had people on hand to deal with all the logistics and ensure the sessions could be filmed. The 15 non-ministerial Steering Committee members had been preparing their own contributions, contacting colleagues from other countries and organisations to ask them their views, including on progress they'd seen (or otherwise) on development effectiveness over the past year, and the specific documents that had been circulated.The secret ingredient, however, was unknown to all of us until the meeting actually began.

The secret ingredient was the three ministers. Their special contribution was to bring leadership to the table. As business lecturer Robert Pozen describes in this interview, there are two typical chairperson styles that are used in meetings. The first style is to be open and ask everyone what they think should be done. This is problematic because it lacks structure, and can lead to a lot of time wasting. The second style is what Pozen describes as authoritarian - where the chair gives their views and asks for a response. This technique can scare people into simply acquiescing. Neither techniques are particularly effective or inclusive. Pozen recommends a third technique - designed to focus discussion and encourage debate.And this is what I saw the ministers deliver at this first meeting.

As you'll see from the videos of the sessions, the ministers opened by putting forward a number of areas they felt needed action. They gave structure by setting out the major challenge – working out what change and success for development that the Global Partnership, now that it is formed, might deliver. They each offered a suggested path, but invited Steering Committee members to support their views or give alternative suggestions. Through this leadership, the ministers were able to gather consensus around the table that the Committee should work on four to five initial topics, which members will write papers on, and which will be shared and discussed with the international community in the early New Year. They also agreed that the Steering Committee will meet again in March and June/July next year and made plans for a bigger ministerial meeting in October 2013, modifying some of the suggestions that had been set out in the papers circulated in advance. The effective chairing was all about leadership.

In retrospect, I think I managed to provide some leadership to the green growth and poverty reduction taskforce that I chaired over the past year. But I know I've still got a long way to go if I want to deliver as decisive, un-bureaucratic and inclusive a meeting as I saw a few days ago. Though there is still a great deal of work to do, it was certainly a successful first meeting, and my hope is that as a result, the other Steering Committee members will be energised in future to come up with new ideas and challenges. We have an exciting year ahead.

I was reminded of this family conundrum when I travelled down to London last week for a number of meetings. Most of the people I met couldn't stop talking about what might replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) after 2015. I wasn't surprised. The High Level Panel that has been asked by the UN Secretary General to write a report on the issue was in London to discuss their work and consult with civil society, private sector and other groups. Added to this, Prime Minister David Cameron had just written an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal about his views on development - which lots of people wanted to give their perspective on. There was a real buzz and air of excitement.

So on Friday afternoon, I decided to join in the buzz and watch a live-streamed event about the Panel’s work with civil society and keep an eye on its twitter hash-tag - #post2015HLP. As I watched, what I found remarkable was the long list of issues raised - from disability to health and education, to jobs and illicit financial flows. At the end, Abhijit Banerjee, one of the panellists, calculated that 32 issues had been raised! Yet the original MDGs only had 8 goals, and London's event was only the first of three major meetings and consultations. I realised the panellists would be concerned about just how long their list of "to do's" would get by the time they issued their report!

Indeed, the High Level Panel could be tempted - like me - to take too much on. The small part of my family in Glasgow can deliver a big, amazing holiday for the wider family. Similarly, the post-2015 framework will and should be ambitious. These first set of meetings in London were a real success - and they indicate just how much potential the post-2015 framework has for being game-changing. But it could also collapse under its own weight. 

The solution for the holiday problem that my husband has come up with is that we should ask our visitors, politely, to each take responsibility for one of the parts of our time together - one of the meals, the drinks, the desserts - and we keep responsibility for the "main bits". 

Sharing brings peace at Christmas: Card designed by Kadiatu Kargbo from Maronka School, Sierra Leone. Credit: DFID

This "sharing" solution could also apply to the post-2015 framework. There are other international processes that could have an impact on development and poverty reduction. Take the G8 next year, which the UK will chair for the first time since 2005. The G20, which Russia will chair. And the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, which Justine Greening is co-chairing with Nigeria's Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala  and Indonesia's Planning Minister Armida Alisjahbana. These are all valuable international fora for discussion and agreement on major, international issues.

Take the Global Partnership. It has a Steering Committee that's due to meet for the first time in December. The Committee could do some complimentary work to the post-2015 discussions. It could work on certain elements of the post-2015 framework that require international coordination - the "how" of the post-2015 framework. It could pave a way for a broad range of actors to contribute to development, something which one of the Millennium Development Goals - MDG8 - had aimed at, but, as this UN report suggests, has not sufficiently addressed.  The Global Partnership, like the G8 or G20, could help achieve some of the post-2015 framework outcomes, and share in the work.

As I returned to Glasgow from London last week, I was struck by just how high expectations are for the post-2015 High Level Panel and the process to agree goals thereafter. Expectations will definitely be high in the New Year when there will be two more high level panel meetings in Liberia and Indonesia. It's all very exciting indeed.  But to make it all most likely to succeed, and keep the post-2015 agenda simple and compelling, as the Prime Minister has already reiterated, we might just need to bring others in, in a complimentary and synergistic way, like my family will now do.

Now, as you might be able to tell from my previous posts, I usually avoid wearing the sceptics hat. But the other day I came across an article that assumed a linear, causal relationship between two variables. The article was by Todd Moss at the Center for Global Development. He argued that the American organisation that provides investment to developing countries "OPIC" should be able to help low-income countries invest in high-carbon energy - such as coal or diesel powered stations, to help stimulate access to energy in those countries. He argued that the limits that OPIC has on this kind of investment are "strategically counterproductive and morally dubious".

I, like Todd, certainly feel strongly about access to energy. Around the world, 1.3 billion people have no access to electricity. Over 80% of those people live either in sub-Saharan Africa or in South Asia. Access can vary dramatically within regions - e.g. over 95% of people lack electricity access in Chad and Liberia versus 25% in South Africa. Although problems are currently worse in rural areas than urban areas, even so about 56% of urban dwellers in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to electricity.

Hans Roslings' latest TED talk cleverly explains why increasing energy access helps reduce poverty. It can expand people's choices and productivity, particularly for women. It also helps business. A recent survey of manufacturing firms in Nigeria showed 83% of respondents identified electricity as their top problem. In many cases, even when people or firms get access to electricity they still suffer from blackouts (such as experienced recently in India) and lack of affordability. Related problems exist in developed countries. In the UK, around 19% of households were fuel poor in 2010 - meaning they had to spend over 10% of their income on fuel for adequate heating. Energy poverty matters.

The problem is, from a quick skim of historic data, there is no major reason to expect investment in conventional high-carbon energy to solve the energy access problem. These graphs from the 2003 and 2002 IEA World Economic Outlooks (respectively) illustrate:

Although the dollars invested in the power sector and installed capacity - most of it based on conventional fuels such as coal, gas and oil - have increased strongly since the 1970s, the number of people with access to electricity has increased somewhat, but not a great deal.

Of course, the problem could be population growth, but the data suggests it isn't. A 2011 study by some global energy experts found no distinguishable relationship between investment in energy infrastructure and the degree of energy poverty once you control for total population. The experts instead suggested the problem was inequality - in many countries, new investment tends to benefit people that already have access. They therefore recommended a five-fold increase in energy sector investment in low-income countries, accompanied by investment in grid extensions, off-grid solutions and renewable energy - rather than the conventional, high-carbon methods used to date.

Added to this, looking ahead, it's not clear that investing in coal or diesel-fired power will always be sensible for all countries – even if these power sources are abundant domestically. Reports such as the European Report on Development and McKinsey's Resource Revolution provide evidence that commodity prices are likely to rise and become more volatile in future. A number of economists such as Shalizi and Lecocq think developing countries might regret building infrastructure that locks them into needing to buy coal or oil or relying on their volatile revenues. While there isn't much evidence on this yet, it's probably sensible for most countries to aim for a diversified energy sector.

These are the reasons why I was sceptical when I read Todd Moss's article calling for OPIC to invest in high-carbon energy. It's also why the UK supports the UN Secretary General's Sustainable Energy For All Initiative, and why DFID helps low-income countries invest in diverse sources of energy through vehicles such as the Scaling Up Renewable Energy Program, the Results-based Financing Facility and Green Africa Power. Pushing OPIC and others to look in new directions and help forge a new relationship between investment and energy access might actually be a good thing. And with that, I took off my sceptics hat.

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This post also featured on Duncan Green's blog, strategic adviser for Oxfam GB and author of from 'Poverty to Power.' Todd Moss from the Center for Global Development has responded to Hannah Ryder’s critique. Read his thoughts and join the debate.