We strive to make the development and application of IERD’s knowledge highly relevant to – and readily accessible in – the public domain, offering the highest standards of research quality. We subscribe to ethical principles that emphasize the rights, independence, dignity and safety of participants in research, and their equality within research relationships with IERD.

We have a definite focus to:

• Achieve a robust, ambitious and fair deal between communities and government
•  Bring management of environment centre-stage in policy, practice, aid architecture and delivery of the MDG.
• 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 organizations and their priorities.
• Re-design markets to bring benefits for poverty reduction, environmental protection and sustainable livelihoods.

To make an impact on policy and practice, we combine a range of tools, skills and actions - linked to generating knowledge, engaging with stakeholders, and communicating effectively in order to build constituencies, create alternative visions, and seize policy openings.

Certain key principles underlie the way we work and guide the choices we make:
• Establishing and strengthening partnerships, through formal and informal mechanisms, based on mutual respect and common interests.
• Maintaining independent thinking, to guarantee our reputation for impartial analysis, interrogating conventional wisdom, and brokering dialogue between diverse groups.
• Doing and thinking, since each activity brings together ideas and practice, to strengthen what works, with a focus on pragmatism and problem-solving, that bridges environment and development.
• Supporting greater voice for less powerful interests, through building their capacity to act and speak, by linking local and global levels, and
• Being flexible and multidisciplinary in approach and methods of work.