“In a speech at the Brookings Institution on Thursday, [USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah] outlined USAID’s new three-part commitment to helping end extreme poverty,” Devex reports. “He said the agency will increasingly focus on public-private partnerships, country programs that demand mutual accountability, and disaster-prone, fragile areas and communities,” the news service writes, adding, “Shah wants USAID’s sharp focus on fragile areas to be better informed by knowledge of when the agency can be ‘hopeful,’ and when it needs to be more ‘cautious’ about what investing in fragile communities and states can achieve.” The news service continues, “‘It’s probably not possible to end extreme poverty, so long as the same low-income communities get hit with the same catastrophes over and over again,’ he said, adding that it remains to be seen ‘how far you can go’ with building resilience to help stave off the worst impacts of conflict and natural disasters, since this is still a relatively new focus for the U.S. donor agency” (Igoe, 11/22). The Brookings Institute’s “Now” blog summarizes Shah’s speech (Dews, 11/21).