Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
The UK, alongside France, Germany, and Norway, has doubled its commitment to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) to £1.4 billion over the next four years. Given the scale of climate change, it's important that we get the most bang for our buck.
This week, the global community is meeting in Geneva for the UNHCR Annual Consultations to discuss collaborative, evidence-based approaches to address the rapidly changing global refugee context. Livelihoods and the environment are important themes.
Today, we published the Commitment to Development Index (CDI) 2018, which ranks 27 of the world’s richest countries on how well their policies help the more than five billion people living in poorer countries. European countries dominate this year’s CDI, occupying the top 12 positions in the Index and with Sweden claiming the #1 spot. Here, we look at what these countries are doing particularly well in the past year to support the world’s poor, and where European leaders can still learn from others.
Yesterday, the German Social Democrats (SPD) voted in favour of pursuing in-depth coalition talks with Angela Merkel’s Conservatives (CDU). Although the chancellor’s battle for political survival is far from over (as the final coalition agreement will have to be backed by the majority of SPD’s 443,000 party members), it is likely that we will see a remaking of a grand coalition. Here we look what that would mean for Germany’s leadership on development.
Germans have given Chancellor Angela Merkel a fourth term as chancellor, but once again without a parliamentary majority. It seems likely that Merkel will now try to negotiate a black-green-yellow “Jamaica coalition” (referring to the parties’ colors) with the Greens and the pro-business Liberals replacing the Social Democrats as coalition partners. Despite the gain in vote for nationalists, our analysis suggests the Jamaica coalition could actually strengthen Germany’s role in accelerating global development, as well as benefitting Germany.
For nearly two decades, China has been rolling out a collection of fiscal instruments for improving environmental quality.
On Thursday, August 4, the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved a new “Environmental and Social Framework” for bank-financed investment projects. While the new policy framework has cleared the hurdle of Board approval, many questions remain. Will the new framework succeed? Will it enhance country capability and commitment to managing environmental and social risks? And will it reduce the bureaucratic hassles associated with bank lending and bolster demand?
Depending on who you listen to, the World Bank has either just launched an unprecedented reach into the domestic political affairs of sovereign nations, or it has gutted the rules that have helped define its essential character as a global norm-setter. Both can’t be right, and most likely, neither is. To better understand the objectives of the bank's newly adopted “safeguards” regime, and why I’m somewhat encouraged by it, it’s worth looking more closely at the arguments of critics on both sides.
Last week, CGD released a working paper by Jonah Busch and Jens Engelmann on the future of the world’s forests. At first glance, the predictions are dire: an area of tropical forest the size of India gone by 2050, one-sixth of the world’s carbon budget spent in the next 35 years, a world more prone to storms and natural disasters. But there is hope.
For at least five years the IMF has been badgering its members about implicit and explicit subsidies on energy. Its most recent salvo points to enormous potential gains from subsidy reform.
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