A CGD blog. Compared to efforts to agree to an overall carbon pricing mechanism or to binding targets on emissions, sectoral approaches to global binding agreements around greenhouse gasses have made considerably more progress. The Montreal Protocol and a series of follow-on agreements have considerably reduced…

A CGD blog. Reuters reports today that the US Defense Department spread anti-vaccine messaging across Southeast Asia during COVID as part of an effort to discredit Chinese-manufactured vaccines. At a minimum, the Administration should amend EO 12333 to mandate that no US intelligence or psychological warfare op…

A CGD blog. It is time for an update to the $100 billion climate finance goal that was agreed to in 2009 as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process. In April, Cartagena hosted the first meeting under the ad hoc work programme on the new collective quantified goal on climate…

A CGD blog. Richer aging countries need educated young workers to provide the services and entrepreneurial talent to sustain their quality of life. A growing population of young, increasingly educated people in poorer countries, and especially in Africa, need good jobs and greater opportunities. More trade in s…

A CGD blog. The ongoing global demographic transition is massive in scale and likely impact. For most of the past 200 years, the vast majority of the world’s countries have seen population growth, particularly working-age population growth. As they’ve gone through the “demographic transition” toward lower birth…

A CGD blog. On Thursday, I delivered testimony before the House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs at a hearing titled “Accountable Assistance: Reviewing Controls to Prevent Mismanagement of Foreign Aid.” I argued that the financial flow of assistanc….

A CGD blog. So: how do donor governments actually use their subsidies to the private sector to support mitigation and development projects around the world? The process usually starts with a private company (the project sponsor) asking a development finance institution (DFI) like the World Bank Group’s Internat…

A CGD blog. In a new note, I suggest there’s little evidence that aid (official development assistance, or ODA) spent on climate mitigation is actually reducing emissions. That’s not to say the finance is wasted: much will have been spent on projects with considerable development impact and some, surely, reduce…

A CGD blog. There is some good news on global climate change. The International Energy Agency suggests we are “at the beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era, with ‘peak fossil’ likely this decade. And the consensus amongst climate modelers appears to be that the worse scenarios historically used by the IP…

A CGD blog. I said in an earlier blog that I thought IDA is the world’s most effective source of external finance for overall development in its poorest countries. Perhaps it’s worth setting out the evidence for that in a little more detail.