A Lead-Free Future: Finally On Its Way?

In April 2021, the Center for Global Development helped raise the alarm about global lead poisoning, a staggering health and development challenge that had heretofore flown under our radar. The statistics produced by organizations like UNICEF and the NGO Pure Earth were shocking: one in three children around the world (800 million!) had dangerous levels of lead in their blood, with widespread lead exposure causing millions of deaths and mass brain damage every year. Yet despite this burden—and the work of leaders and advocates to raise awareness and generate knowledge about the scope and scale of the problem—lead poisoning was almost completely absent from the mainstream global health and development agendas.  

Three years later, I’m thrilled to report that the tide has officially turned. Earlier today, USAID Administrator Samantha Power and UNICEF Executive Director announced the launch of the Partnership for a Lead-Free Future (PLF)—the first ever global public-private partnership dedicated to tackling childhood lead exposure at-large in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). 

At CGD, we’re proud to be a founding member of the coalition. We know that we’re still in the early days of the global movement to stamp out the scourge of childhood lead poisoning, with most of the work still ahead of us. Yet this is nevertheless a moment for (interim) celebration: we finally have the political attention, leadership, and money to put the world on track for a lead-free future—if we use these soft and hard resources effectively.

The partnership for a lead-free future puts lead on the big development stage

Today’s launch event was a star-studded affair. The partnership counts many of the largest health and development institutions and financing bodies among its members—USAID, UNICEF, the World Bank, World Health Organization (WHO), UN Environment Program, Open Philanthropy, the Gates Foundation, and Dangote Foundation, among many others. Almost all of these groups sent their top leadership to attend the launch event, alongside three heads of state (Dominican Republic, Malawi, and Nepal), plus special guest First Lady Dr. Jill Biden! 

This makes for a self-evidently impressive event line-up, but far more importantly signals a level of awareness, penetration, and commitment to the fight against lead poisoning that now extends across the mainstream health and development communities. All of this was unimaginable just a few years ago, and now collectively offers an invaluable platform for coordination, national and subnational outreach, and access to finance for lead mitigation.  

Speaking of money: the global movement to end lead poisoning now has a lot more! USAID’s Administrator Power announced that the Partnership’s donors have already secured $150 million to support lead mitigation efforts—a 10x increase from annual spending of lead mitigation in recent years. This is still small potatoes compared to (say) malaria or HIV spending, which totals billions every year. But in the lead-world, smaller amounts of money go further. Our Working Group estimated that just $350 million in international financing through 2030 “would be sufficient to transform the landscape and mobilize scaled action to address lead poisoning in LMICs.” $150 million over the next several years is a terrific start, and puts our overall fundraising goal within plausible reach. 

So what is the new partnership, exactly?

Coalition- and institution-building is a long-term project. The exact form and function of the Partnership for a Lead-Free Future (PLF) will continue to be clarified and evolve over the coming months. For now, it seems like the PLF has two complementary components. The first is a formal secretariat, housed at UNICEF, which will exercise an overall steering and execution function. The second is a broader partnership, comprised of governments, funders, implementers, technical bodies, and research groups, which will be loosely organized via the PLF “as a coordination hub…committed to creating a lead-free future for every child.” 

The flow of money is another question. There’s no indication yet that the secretariat will itself be a funding mechanism, and instead it seems that most of the $150 million will be distributed directly from funders to implementers/governments. Open Philanthropy has itself raised a $104 million Lead Elimination Action Fund (LEAF) on behalf of several philanthropists and high-net worth individuals, which it will directly administer; there was also $25 million announced from USAID, and $10 million from Gates Foundation that will be directly spent (plus another $10 million from Gates that’s being channeled through LEAF). The PLF as a coordination body may have some indirect say in how those resources are deployed, but there’s not (yet) a clear formal mechanism for doing so. 

But even without direct control of the money, a PLF coordinating body based at UNICEF has enormous value. Many of the PLF partners (UNICEF, USAID, the World Bank, and WHO, among others) can draw upon their global networks of field offices and missions to reach partner governments, local NGOs, and even the general public with information, outreach, and technical assistance. They can also use these networks to identify promising opportunities for technical partnerships and high-impact funding deployments, in turn matchmaking with the funders and technical experts with capacity to assist. A shared platform for all this helps build trust, connections, and mutual awareness, which can make the efforts add up to more than the sum of their parts. 

Onwards to the lead-free future! 

As I said at the beginning of this blog, the PLF announcement marks the official beginning of the journey toward a lead-free future—not its conclusion. 

At CGD, we take our role as a partner in this effort seriously. For today, we’re celebrating. But tomorrow, we’re getting right back to work—generating, collating, and sharing evidence and evidence-based policy to make this opportunity count.