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Calls into question the very universal, unquestioned assumptions about globalization, development, and environmental change that undergird much of development and economic policy. Compels the reader to question conventional wisdom and explores alternative ways of achieving meaningful, enduring improvements to human well-being.

The Millennium Village Project (MVP) has come to embody hope for a new development path that might succeed where previous efforts have failed. A closer consideration of this project, however, suggests that this hope might be misplaced. Because of a general dearth of critical thought in key areas of project conceptualization, the MVP risks reproducing the problems of previous top-down, expert-driven development efforts. This article examines the conceptual issues raised by this absence of critical thought, and the reasons why project supporters have generally overlooked these issues. It then presents a critical grassroots framework which, if incorporated into existing MVP practices, might allow for the creation of a realistic, sustainable development path in Africa.

This paper examines the role of environmental change as a driver of migration, a central concern of areas of inquiry ranging from the Human Dimensions of Global Change research to population geography and development studies. Although much of the literature on the role of the environment in migration reflects a general awareness that environmental factors are but one of a suite of influences shaping migration decisionmaking, a framework within which to place social, economic, and environmental issues with regard to particular migration decisions is absent from this literature. Drawing upon recent contributions to the literature on migration, and political ecological concerns for access to and control over resources, in this paper I present a framework for placing such issues founded on a Foucauldian conceptualization of power. This framework treats environment, economy, and society as both products of and productive of social differentiation, instrumental modes of power, and resistance. These forms shape actors' understanding and negotiation of their social, economic, and environmental contexts, and therefore their migration decisionmaking. I illustrate the application of this framework through the example of three villages in Ghana's Central Region, where rural environmental and economic changes appear to have driven a complex pattern of out-migration over the past thirty-five years. This migration shows the ways in which environmental change becomes inseparable from local perceptions of economy and local politics through local manifestations of power.

Abstract
While climate services have the potential to reduce precipitation- and temperature-related risks to agrarian livelihoods, such outcomes are possible only when they deliver information that is salient, legitimate, and credible to end users. This is particularly true of climate services intended to address the needs of women in agrarian contexts. The design of such gender-sensitive services is hampered by oversimplified framings of women as a group in both the adaptation and climate services literatures. This paper demonstrates that even at the village level, women have different climate and weather information needs, and differing abilities to act on that information. Therefore, starting with preconceived connections between identities and vulnerability is likely to result in overgeneralizations that hinder the ability to address the climate-related development and adaptation needs of the most vulnerable. Instead, as is demonstrated in this paper, the design and implementation of effective gender-sensitive climate services must start with the relevant social differences that shape people's livelihoods decisions and outcomes, including but not limited to gender.