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David Wheeler, our lead researcher on climate and development, decided recently to retire from CGD, though he will continue to be active in CGD’s intellectual life as our first Senior Fellow Emeritus. Since joining CGD in 2006, David has published more than 20 working papers and launched two path-breaking global databases, Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA), which provides data on the CO2 emissions of more than 50,000 powerplants worldwide, and Forest Monitoring for Action (FORMA), which uses satellite data to provide rapid, high-resolution tracking of tropical deforestation.

We discuss some surprising findings from David’s newly released analysis (Forest Clearing in the Pantropics:  December 2005-August 2011) of the FORMA data. There is both good news and bad news. Total forest clearing has dropped during the global recession, but with enormous variation within countries and across regions, he says. For example, there have been large declines in the rate of forest clearing in Brazil, Bolivia, Indonesia, and Paraguay but large increases in Myanmar, Malaysia, Peru, and Venezuela.  A companion paper (Economic Dynamics and Forest Clearing) finds that economic factors such as market prices, exchange rates, and interest rates all influence forest clearing.  The availability of communications infrastructure such as mobile phones, zoning, rainfall and terrain slope also play a role.

When Dominique Straus-Kahn resigned suddenly as head of the International Monetary Fund last May, the world was thrown unexpectedly into search for his successor. Within days, CGD launched a survey of the global development community opinion on three issues: the selection process, criteria for rating the candidates, and ratings for 15 candidates identified in international media.

My guest on this Wonkcast is David Wheeler, who led the survey and a similar survey on the process for selecting the president of the World Bank when Paul Wolfowitz resigned from that post in 2007. The big take away (summarized in CGD working papers here and here): Regardless of nationality, a huge majority of respondents agree on the need to reform the leadership selection processes for the two Bretton Woods institutions.

Rapid climate change is upon us, and governments, multilateral organizations, and development agencies are preparing to dole out billions of dollars in adaptation assistance. Nevertheless, little research has gone into calculating which countries are most vulnerable to global warming.

On this Wonkcast, I'm joined by David Wheeler, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, who created an index for determining which countries should be prioritized when the money starts to flow. His new paper, "Quantifying Vulnerability to Climate Change: Implications for Adaptation Assistance", provides an index for comparison of cross-country vulnerability to some of the most extreme climate threats. An accompanying map makes it easy to see which countries will be hit hardest.

David Roodman, research fellow at the Center for global Development presents the 2007 Commitment to Development Index results.

This video presents highlight from Lord Nicholas Stern's presentation at the third annual Richard H. Sabot Lecture.