Ideas to Action:
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With the overdue resignation of Paul Wolfowitz, a very difficult period has ended at the World Bank. What matters now is the selection of the next bank president. The high cost of rubber-stamping the choice of a single government should now be evident to all concerned.
Several CGD senior staff, including CGD president Nancy Birdsall, are among the more than 160 senior development professionals and experts who have signed a joint letter urging reform of the leadership selection process at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Excerpts:
With any luck, the sad and strange saga of Paul Wolfowitz's tenure at the World Bank will enter its final chapter this week.
In 2005 as Paul Wolfowitz began his presidency of the World Bank, I and others set out an agenda for him --- to rescue the World Bank from slow decline into irrelevane and obscurity (see the CGD working group report: The Hardest Job in the World: Five Crucial Tasks for the New President of the World Bank)
Politicians and protesters in Washington today for the first Climate Crisis Action Day would do well to remember that global institutions have a potentially valuable role to play in addressing global warming.
The FT notes that talks have begun for the IDA-15 replenishment round. This is the latest set of negotiations that take place every three years where the World Bank asks its shareholders for cash to provide grants or to buy down the interest rates for its lending to poor countries--and when the donors typically load up the Bank with new conditions. Although these talks are often tough, the donors almost always increase their contributions.
In Tuesday's editorial on "Mr. Wolfowitz and the Bank", The New York Times referred to three issues that need his leadership:
"giv[ing] more of a voice to less wealthy and poor countries;…find[ing] new ways to mobilize private sector financing; [and] addressing global challenges like epidemics, sustainable energy and post-conflict reconstruction."
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