We are now at the end of a 25–30 year era of development thinking and practice. The idea of development as a mainspring for political and social mobilization is not going to disappear, but will be transformed. What will emerge as central features of the new development agenda is unclear. But it is certain that key parameters will be include social dimensions of well-being that are rooted in our common relationship with the physical environment; a shift away from one-size-fits-all approaches towards contextual, locally rooted and locally owned development practices to improve well-being; and a complex interplay between universal global norms and local meanings and agency.

The Wellbeing in Developing Countries (WeD) research group provides resources for thinking about these issues as well as a powerful critique of current international approaches to poverty reduction, which are divorced from the local meaning of well-being as well as from analysis of societal constraints on agency.

Charles Gore, UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), was one of the principal authors of the Least Developed Countries Report.