The world confronts three major disruptive challenges which will create large numbers of winners and losers, and which need careful management. The three are unequal globalisation, climate change and digitalisation. The Sustainable Development Goals provide a good description of the world we want at the end of this change process, but a poor roadmap of how to get there. A new narrative is needed, which finds a path between neoliberalism and populism: the history of development studies offers many signposts.

Simon Maxwell is one of the UK’s leading specialists on international development. He is a development economist with a career in research, aid management and policy advice spanning 45 years. He worked overseas for ten years, in Kenya and India for UNDP, and for the UK aid programme in Bolivia, then for fifteen years at IDS in Sussex, and for a dozen years as Director of ODI in London. He was until recently Executive Chair of the Climate and Development Knowledge Network and a Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons International Development Select Committee. He is currently Chair of the European Think Tanks Group.
Simon is a past President of the Development Studies Association of the UK and Ireland. In 2007, he was awarded a CBE for services to international development. For further information, see www.simonmaxwell.eu.