Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
With rigorous economic research and practical policy solutions, we focus on the issues and institutions that are critical to global development. Explore our core themes and topics to learn more about our work.
In timely and incisive analysis, our experts parse the latest development news and devise practical solutions to new and emerging challenges. Our events convene the top thinkers and doers in global development.
CGD works to reduce global poverty and improve lives through innovative economic research that drives better policy and practice by the world’s top decision makers.
CGD experts offer ideas and analysis to improve international development policy. Also check out our Global Health blog and US Development Policy blog.
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.
We’re number 7! The International Center for Climate Governance (ICCG) has released its third annual ranking of climate think tanks, and CGD placed seventh out of 244 tanks ranked worldwide for 2014.
In 1989, I was asked to give the “Earth Day” sermon at the Jakarta Community Church. While there are more than 25 years and an infinite distance between Frances’ sermon and Francis’ encyclical, I was curious to see what the Pope would do with a similar assignment.
Pope Francis has firmly pronounced that climate change is a threat to the world’s poor in a long-awaited encyclical released on Thursday. The Pope is the religious leader of more than one billion Catholics, more than half of whom live in the developing world. But he has addressed the encyclical to “every person who lives on this planet,” Catholic and non-Catholic alike.
The G-7 committed on Monday to “decarbonization of the global economy over the course of this century.” The goal of decarbonization—powering the economy without emitting greenhouse gases—has ascended with dizzying velocity from a plea by activists to acceptance at the highest levels of government.
A new global climate agreement based on voluntary national pledges of domestic action is expected to be finalized in Paris in December. As of now, the 28 nations of the European Union and 9 other nations including the United States, Mexico, and Russia have submitted plans (called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs).
Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally released proposed targets for blending biofuels with gasoline and diesel for 2014 (18 months late) and for the current year (6 months late).
What would happen if a country that struck oil decided to share the income directly with its own citizens? That’s precisely the question that Caroline Lambert, Stephanie Majerowicz, and I try to explore in our new book Oil to Cash: Fighting the Resource Curse with Cash Transfers.
From Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu to record-breaking drought in California, humanity is getting a preview of the devastation held in store by climate change. The pressure is on world leaders to reach an agreement in Paris this December to cut back on climate-changing emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation.
Commentary Menu