Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
Donors frequently suggest corruption is the biggest obstacle to development and aid effectiveness, and that they can accurately measure corruption risk while protecting their projects from it at a reasonable cost. It isn’t and they can’t. Below, a brief synopsis.
This Earth Day, more than sixty heads of state will gather in New York to sign the Paris Agreement on climate change. The agreement declared in December the unanimous aim of 196 governments to work toward the near-elimination of greenhouse gas emissions by the second half of this century. Although the New York ceremony represents another high-profile sign of political support for stabilizing Earth’s climate, significant challenges remain.
Are genetically modified organisms (GMOs) likely to play a significant role in tackling malnutrition and reducing poverty in Africa? Our short answer is "it depends." In a new CGD policy paper and brief, we examine the evidence and conclude that currently available GMOs are of limited relevance for most developing countries, especially in Africa.
For some time, we’ve been cheering MCC’s interest in pursuing approaches that pay for outcomes and encouraging the agency’s stakeholders to get onboard (here and here). Now we can applaud an important step forward. The agency’s new compact with Morocco, which both partners celebrated at an event last Thursday in Rabat, spells out the potential for a results-based financing component—a welcome development.
Last week, Secretary of State John Kerry and World Bank President Jim Kim assembled government, multilateral and corporate leaders to discuss the importance of internet connectivity to development. While the event generated important momentum, it didn’t resolve some big questions on how the initiative will increase prioritization, coordination, and impact.
At a CGD event on financial inclusion, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde noted that financial inclusion is a priority for the post-2015 development agenda as a whole. Here we explore both the benefits of financial inclusion and some concrete steps for achieving it, specifically looking at ways to overcome a persistent gender gap that leaves women with less access to financial services than men.
Most antibiotics around the world today are fed to farm animals to promote growth and prevent diseases fostered by crowded conditions on factory farms. There is an urgent need to find alternatives to keep animals healthy, and preserve crucial antibiotics for human health. One way to do that would be to create an international treaty not to use antibiotics in livestock feed — and probiotics, like those found in yogurt, may be a stepping stone toward that goal.
To what extent have aid agencies delivered on their commitments to transparency? How do these agencies’ transparency efforts compare to one another? And beyond mere publication, what else needs to be done to make sure that available data is put to good use?
Imagine if a small cut could evolve into a lengthy hospital stay, or worse; if doctors refused to perform surgery or transplants due to prohibitive risk during recovery; and if our collective gains against the world’s biggest infectious killers—HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted infections, pneumonia, and more—slowed, stalled, and reversed. These nightmare scenarios could become the new global reality if common pathogens evolve to withstand and survive treatment with antimicrobial drugs, a phenomenon known as antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
For years, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) has been attacked by a handful of organizations as corporate welfare. But, were the charges of corporate welfare actually true? My colleague Todd Moss and I spent months looking at the data to get an answer, and here it is: no.
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