Practical Action Publishing imprint: 75 books

The Sustainable Development Goals, which were adopted by 193 countries in 2015, set clear targets for ending hunger and undernutrition, as well as tackling poverty, inequality and the impact of climate change, by the year 2030. The vision they represent is an inclusive one, in which no one is left...

From Infrastructure to Services reveals important breakthroughs in country-led and country-wide monitoring of rural and small towns water supplies; ICT for monitoring sustainable service delivery; monitoring the finance needed for service delivery; monitoring for sanitation and hygiene; and building...

Technology underpins human development. We need it to provide the very basics of a minimum standard of life – food, water, shelter, health and education. But a significant proportion of the world’s population do not have these basics today. And whilst a fifth of the world’s population lacks...

Development is about change, and lives immersed in researching international development should be prepared for exploration, for discovering the unexpected, and for questioning the direction that ‘development’ is taking. Robert Chambers reflects on experiences, which led him to examine personal...

Although great strides have been made, Africa still lags behind other parts of the world in the reduction of poverty. We now know that the poorest people rarely benefit from poverty reduction programmes, and this is especially true in some countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Microfinance programmes,...

This book provides new empirical evidence on access to and use of ICTs and their effect on poor households in East African and Southern African countries. It addresses the questions: Under what conditions do women benefit economically from using ICTs? How are the livelihoods of rural users affected?...

Training for Transformation is an approach to community organization encompassed in three books which enables people to ‘read their reality and write their own history’ using a combination of group processes, socio-economic analysis and organizational development processes. Since its inception 40...

International NGOs are increasingly under pressure from governments and the public to demonstrate evidence of impact and positive results. This book critically examines how development NGOs working around the world create knowledge and evidence, and use it to satisfy donors, to improve their practices,...

Peasants and the Art of Farming: A Chayanovian Manifesto focuses on the structure and dynamics of peasant farms and the historically highly variable relations that govern the processes of labour and production within peasant farms. Jan Douwe van der Ploeg argues that peasant agriculture can play an...

Do we use obscure or fashionable words to impress our colleagues or win research proposals? Are many of our actions against poverty simple, direct and wrong? Provocations for Development is an entertaining and unsettling collection of writings that questions concepts, conventions and practices in...

Poor people in developing countries need water for many purposes: for drinking, bathing, irrigating vegetable gardens, and watering livestock. However, responsibility for water services is divided between different government agencies, the WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) and irrigation sub-sectors,...

The LEGS process grew out of the recognition that livestock are a crucial liveli¬hood asset for people throughout the world – many of whom are poor and vulnerable to both natural and human-induced disasters – and that livestock support is an important component of emergency aid programmes.The...

Children are the most vulnerable people in the world – but rarely has the impact of poverty on children been addressed as an urgent issue in its own right. The harm that deprivation does to girls and boys as individuals, and the lasting cost of poverty, have received too limited attention. Policies...

This book is intended for all who are committed to human wellbeing and who want to make our world fairer, safer and more fulfilling for everyone, especially those who are ‘last’. It argues that to do better we need to know better. It provides evidence that what we believe we know in international...