Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
The UK government is currently identifying reductions that will reduce its aid budget from over £15bn in 2019 to £10bn for 2021-22. In this blog we update our previous analysis which quantified the aid spend directly evaluated and graded by ICAI across different government departments.
US president-elect Joe Biden has pledged to eliminate fossil fuels, domestically and globally. We look at the fiscal cost of those subsidies, which countries make most use of them overall, and how dirty are the fuels they subsidise. We look at political barriers and conclude with four reasons why reform can succeed in 2021.
With the UK government reducing the aid budget, the impact and scrutiny on that spend will be even more important. One key element of this architecture is the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI)—whose remit the government is also currently reviewing.
We don’t know as much as we should about the real-world costs and effectiveness of climate mitigation projects in low- and middle-income countries. This blog looks at what we do know and finds that real-world cost-effectiveness appears to be orders-of-magnitude different between projects even in the same sector.
This week, development ministers of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) come together for one of their occasional “high-level meetings.” Here's what we think should be on the agenda.
As the possibility of a new Cold War between the US and China gains traction in some foreign policy circles, the scale of Chinese development finance has taken center stage. A closer examination suggests the cost to China of this lending is distinctly underwhelming. It would be cheap for the US and Europe to match China’s lending numbers –and in the interest of global development if it was done right.
Three years ago, the government pledged “to help improve access to UK markets for world’s poorest countries post-Brexit." Our experts review whether they are still on track to meet this.
Earlier this year, we launched the Commitment to Development Index (CDI), after commissioning a holistic two-year review to reassess which policies from the world’s major economies matter most for global development. One major area of feedback in the review discussions was that we should assess policies that support gender equality in development.
In new research released today, we show that the UK’s (non-aid) overseas spending via the EU—that helped support lower-income EU countries—is a substantial but often overlooked resource.
For most people, a billion is an abstract concept; it may feel like an overwhelming number that’s hard to envision. To help, we are mixing some maths and football fun to describe the global population with two football stadiums.
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