By John McArthur, Christine Zhang

The internationally agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are starting to become a reference point for a wide range of public and private actors. In recent weeks, for example, New York City declared it will be the first major city to report directly to the United Nations on its progress toward the relevant economic, social, and environment targets for 2030. This came shortly after an array of Canadian federal ministers emphasized the goals’ importance both domestically and internationally. Meanwhile, in the big leagues of business, many of the world’s foremost institutional investors have indicated (e.g., here, here, and here) they are considering integrating the SDGs into their investment processes. Even Kanye West, the celebrity artist, posted the 17 goals for his 28 million Twitter followers, to many people’s surprise.

Will the momentum continue to build? The SDGs still have a long road to travel if they want to penetrate broader public consciousness, at least as measured by traditional media coverage. This assertion is based on findings from our recent article published in Global Policy, which tracks the evolution of predecessor Millennium Development Goal (MDG) and SDG mentions in a cross-section of 16 major print media outlets and 13 academic journals from 2000 to 2016, updating results from a working paper first published in 2015. It is undeniable that the nature of public discourse has evolved rapidly over the past decade, especially in the context of digital technologies—two-thirds of Americans now report getting their news on social media sites—but newspaper content provides a consistent analytical benchmark that can be tracked all the way back to 2000.

Our paper found that, in advanced economy media markets, coverage of global goals jumps in U.N. summit years but tends to lag in off-summit years. To illustrate, Figure 1 indicates the annual frequency of MDG and SDG mentions in three major newspapers: The Guardian, the Financial Times, and The New York Times. In these outlets, there was a gradual buildup of MDG coverage during the early 2000s, followed by pronounced spikes linked to major U.N. summits in 2005, 2008, and 2010. Each newspaper then had a relative lull in coverage before another upward tick in 2015, the year of the major SDG adoption summit. In both The Guardian and The New York Times, MDG-SDG coverage was greater in 2015 than in any of the previous 15 years, while the upswing was more modest in the Financial Times. But in 2016, coverage across all three papers dropped to numbers typical of a pre-2015 non-summit year. At least up to the end of 2016, it was not clear if these news outlets were paying substantively different attention to the SDGs than they had been to the MDGs.

Figure 1. MDG and SDG coverage across select advanced economy newspapers, 2000-2016

Figure 2 shows fairly different dynamics for a selection of newspapers from emerging economies: The Times of India, The Star (of South Africa), and the Vanguard (of Nigeria). Although these papers don’t have searchable data all the way back to the early 2000s, the first thing that jumps out in the figure is the somewhat higher number of MDG-SDG mentions compared to the publications from advanced economies in Figure 1. However, the three papers saw only a small jump in coverage in 2015. Then The Star and the Vanguard saw a typical post-summit year drop in mentions in 2016. The Times of India was a notable exception: It was one of only two papers in our sample that had its highest number of MDG-SDG mentions in 2016, relative to the preceding years. (The other was USA Today, which had only two relevant articles in 2016, compared to one in each of a handful of earlier years.) It would be unwise to draw too many conclusions from these simple article counts, but they do suggest that the SDGs might have already become a significantly more common reference point in India than the MDGs were during the full period up to 2015.

Figure 2: MDG & SDG coverage across select emerging economy newspapers, 2000-2016

ACADEMIC PAPERS

Our Global Policy article also considers the extent to which the MDGs were referenced across a range of prominent relevant academic outlets through the end of 2015. (Given the longer gestation periods for many academic papers, we thought it too early to examine SDG mentions at the time of submission.) When our working paper found that the global health journal The Lancet had the highest number of MDG references among 12 academic journals we examined, we originally wrote, “… it is probably not a coincidence that global health saw the most significant MDG breakthroughs.” Our new version adds The BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) to the sample, lending further support to this hypothesis. The prevalence of MDG references in The Lancet and The BMJ suggest that at least some portion of the health research community considered itself as MDG protagonist—an outlook seemingly not shared across all academic disciplines. The leading economics journals, for instance, rank among the lowest in terms of MDG references. Nonetheless, World Development, the prominent cross-disciplinary social science journal, did register the largest share of articles mentioning the MDGs, at 8.6 percent.

In our original working paper, we also found that the World Bank and regional development banks’ research papers paid only modest specific attention to the MDGs. A more up-to-date look at the numbers tells a similar story: In 2015, only 6.6 percent of World Bank policy research working papers made mention of the MDGs. As for the SDGs, according to a quick search earlier this month of the World Bank’s working papers site, only nine World Bank policy research working papers published since 2015 mention the term “sustainable development goals.” The SDGs don’t yet appear to set an important guide star for the organization’s policy research machinery.

WHAT NEXT?

Next month the U.N. will convene its annual “high-level political forum” on the SDGs. This is where different countries take turns each year to describe their own progress toward the goals and map out next steps. Amid all the likely discussions on indicators, policies, and processes, one of the most important things for delegates to discuss is how to engage people far away from the U.N. spotlight—citizens, businesses, researchers, journalists, and social media users alike—to make them feel included in the SDG debates. Achieving the goals will require thoughtful ongoing conversations in communities around the globe. The increasingly decentralized and digitized nature of public discourse will require new approaches to promoting SDG-relevant debates. Each constituency needs to figure out its own path. Sustained spotlights from public and private leaders could help provide a crucial first step.

Photo Credit: Mr. Yuan Tao and Ms. Yan Lu. https://www.globalgoals.org/resources

      

 

 

By Homi Kharas, Kristofer Hamel, Martin Hofer

Last September, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation released its annual Goalkeeper’s report, highlighting the extraordinary progress made in reducing extreme poverty around the world, while also warning that sustaining this progress would not be easy.

We now have the first actual data points that ring the alarm bells about a new, unfolding story on global poverty reduction that is far less favorable than pieces such as Nick Kristof’s New York Times column “Why 2017 was the best year in human history.” These new data are available courtesy of the World Poverty Clock, a web tool produced by World Data Lab with which the three of us are associated. (A paper presenting the methodology underpinning the World Poverty Clock has been published by Nature’s Palgrave Communications journal.)

Each April and October, the World Poverty Clock data are updated to take into account new household surveys (an additional 97 surveys were made available this April) and new projections on country economic growth from the International Monetary Funds’s World Economic Outlook. These form the basic building blocks for poverty trajectories computed for 188 countries and territories, developed and developing, across the world.

The data highlight two new storylines about what is happening to global extreme poverty.

First: Extreme poverty in today’s world is largely about Africa

According to our projections, Nigeria has already overtaken India as the country with the largest number of extreme poor in early 2018, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo could soon take over the number 2 spot (Figure 1 below). At the end of May 2018, our trajectories suggest that Nigeria had about 87 million people in extreme poverty, compared with India’s 73 million. What is more, extreme poverty in Nigeria is growing by six people every minute, while poverty in India continues to fall. In fact, by the end of 2018 in Africa as a whole, there will probably be about 3.2 million more people living in extreme poverty than there are today.

Already, Africans account for about two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor. If current trends persist, they will account for nine-tenths by 2030. Fourteen out of 18 countries in the world—where the number of extreme poor is rising—are in Africa.

Figure 1: India is moving down in global poverty rankings

Source: Authors’ estimates based on PovCal (World Bank), World Economic Outlook (IMF); World Population Prospects (UN); Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (IIASA), World Income Inequality Database (UNU-WIDER); Algorithm developed by World Data Lab

Second: It is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve SDG 1 (ENDing poverty)

Between January 1, 2016—when implementation of internationally agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) started—and July 2018, the world has seen about 83 million people escape extreme poverty. But if extreme poverty were to fall to zero by 2030, we should have already reduced the number by about 120 million, just assuming a linear trajectory. To get rid of this backlog of some 35 million people, we now have to rapidly step up the pace.

This notwithstanding, the fundamental dynamics of global extreme poverty reduction are clear. Given a starting point of about 725 million people in extreme poverty at the beginning of 2016, we needed to reduce poverty by 1.5 people every second to achieve the goal and yet we’ve been moving at a pace of only 1.1 people per second. Given that we’ve fallen behind so much, the new target rate has just increased to 1.6 people per second through 2030. At the same time, because so many countries are falling behind, the actual pace of poverty reduction is starting to slow down. Our projections show that by 2020, the pace could fall to 0.9 people per second, and to 0.5 people per second by 2022.

As we fall further behind the target pace, the task of ending extreme poverty by 2030 is becoming inexorably harder because we are running out of time. We should celebrate our achievements, but increasingly sound the alarm that not enough is being done, especially in Africa.

Note: For questions on the underlying data model and access to the data please contact Kris Hamel (kristofer.hamel@worlddata.io).

      

 

 

By Paul Prettitore, Sandie Okoro

The inclusion of “access to justice for all” as part of the internationally agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is an important milestone in promoting inclusive growth. It presents a welcomed opportunity to link legal justice with achievement of other SDGs covering human and social development, gender equality, and poverty reduction. And it has prompted much discussion around data and making the development case for investment in access to justice and social services.

One of the key questions in assessing access to justice is, access for whom? Citizen experience with the legal sector varies with income and education levels, minority status, and gender.  Access for vulnerable persons is critical because justice provides an important tool for enforcing rights and guaranteeing protections. Justice services can also help hold governments accountable for delivery of basic services, such as health and education.

One way to measure justice gaps is through household surveys.  The number of surveys covering issues of access has been increasing rapidly, spreading well beyond the high-income countries where they started.  Survey instruments are becoming more sophisticated, and survey sizes are increasing. In 2016 the government of Colombia conducted the largest such survey as a module of its Quality of Life Survey (Encuesta Calidad de Vida), reaching over 50,000 individuals in more than 20,000 households.

While justice remains highly context-specific, data from these surveys suggest some interesting trends:

Women are more likely to face certain types of legal problems

Evidence on whether women or men are more likely to experience legal problems is mixed.  What appears clearer is that women are more likely to face certain types of legal problems. One example is family issues, including alimony, child support, divorce, and child custody, as documented by a series of surveys conducted by HiiL innovating Justice (Figure 1). Women in Jordan were more than three times as likely to report family law problems. In Uganda they were 2.5 times more likely, and twice as likely in Tunisia. In the Colombia Quality of Life Survey, the largest gender gap was in family law issues, accounting for one-quarter of legal problems facing women versus 15 percent for men.

Women are also generally more likely to face legal problems in relations with neighbors and access to social safety net benefits. But they were much less likely to report legal problems related to employment, finances, crime, land, and access to public services, likely reflecting their limited economic and social participation.

Figure 1: Percent of persons reporting family law problems, women versus men

Women face numerous obstacles in navigating justice systems

Women’s more limited control over economic assets and labor force participation means they often lack the financial resources to access courts and lawyers. They often lack knowledge of formal institutions and procedures. Restrictive social norms also play a role. Women in Jordan and Tunisia have reported shame, customs, and the fear of revenge as reasons for not seeking access to legal services. Without access to formal justice, women are more reliant on informal networks, such as family and friends, for information and assistance. However, these networks often enforce discriminatory social norms. A qualitative survey of female beneficiaries of legal aid in Jordan found that their families usually discouraged them from reporting domestic violence to the police.

Women are often more highly impacted by legal problems

In Colombia, the severity of impacts of legal problems on women more closely mirrors that of the poor and ethnic minorities than men (Figure 2). Women are often more likely to report serious impacts such as stress-related illnesses, problems with relationships, violence and personal injuries, while men more often report loss of income and time. Women are also more financially dependent on court decisions awarding financial support, for example, those on access to marital property, alimony, and child support, yet they often lack the means to obtain or enforce them. For many women and their families, legal problems and the inability to access justice present social and economic shocks from which recovery is difficult.

Figure 2: Severity of impacts of legal problems

These gaps matter. That women face different types of legal problems than men suggests a combination of legal discrimination, social and economic inequality, administrative bias, restrictive social norms, and exclusion undermine access in different yet complementary ways. The lack of access in turn reinforces these vulnerabilities. Understanding gaps will also help in more accurately targeting key services that may be particularly helpful to women, such as legal aid, self-help, access to alimony and child support, and protection orders. Further analysis of existing data sheds light on gaps in other key areas, including pathways to resolving legal problems, trust in justice institutions, and access to information.

There is still much we do not know about the gender justice gap, such as how gaps shift as economies grow. Regression analyses of survey data in upper income countries suggest gender may become less of a factor in experiencing legal problems. The gender gap in access to justice for family law issues, which is considerable in many middle and lower income countries, decreases considerably. Instead, factors like income and education levels, minority status, disability, and geographic location appear more influential in determining gaps in access. Gender is just one dimension of vulnerability in accessing justice, but it remains important to understand how gender interacts with the other factors.

      

 

 

India is among the many countries rethinking what it means to be a prosperous and developed country. The concept of Gross National Happiness in Bhutan and the United Nations’ World Happiness Report are some examples of this re-thinking on human development around the world. In his February 2018 budget speech, Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley also outlined his government’s priority on ensuring ‘ease of living’. New Zealand is at the forefront of this issue, with plans to be one of the first countries in the world to measure its success against how it performs socially, culturally and environmentally.

To discuss some of the ways to rethink indicators of well-being, Brookings India and the New Zealand High Commission organised a private discussion with Gabriel Makhlouf, Secretary and Chief Executive to the Treasury of New Zealand and Dr. Shamika Ravi, Senior Fellow and Director of Research at Brookings India and Member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council.  The discussion was held at the New Zealand High Commission.

      

 

 

As policymakers, scientists, business and civic leaders, and others meet to take stock of progress towards the sustainable development goals (SDGs) at the UN’s High Level Political Forum, the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings is hosting the D.C. launch of From Summits to Solutions: Innovations in Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals.

The book is a collaborative effort with the Japan International Cooperation Agency to identify where we need to reach beyond what has simply worked in the past. The volume draws attention to the emerging challenges of engaging new actors with new approaches. It covers topics ranging from the role of businesses in supporting the SDGs, to how advanced economies can tackle the goals, to reforms that expand women’s opportunities, and many other innovations that are needed to overcome inertia and break through bureaucratic and political hurdles stalling progress.

On July 18, several of the book’s contributors will discuss the big ideas that would lead to a departure from business-as-usual and avoid an unsustainable, crowded, brutish future for the world.

      

 

 

By Christina Golubski

The impact of Industry 4.0—the next phase in the digitization of the manufacturing sector driven by computing power, connectivity, and new forms of human-machine interaction—will be wide and profound. It offers exciting opportunities for African manufacturers and small and medium enterprises to create new business models and integrate into global value chains. However, benefiting from Industry 4.0 requires overcoming a myriad of obstacles. Given Africa’s unique context, policymakers must ask the right questions to make sure the continent can capitalize on the revolution. On June 4, the Brookings Africa Growth Initiative and United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) explored strategies to anticipate and circumvent the challenges the “New Industrial Revolution” is generating as well as how all of Africa can benefit from Industry 4.0.

Brookings Africa Growth Initiative Director and Senior Fellow Brahima S. Coulibaly opened event, framing the conversation. He noted that Industry 4.0 present opportunities as well as challenges for Africa, which are daunting. Addressing these nonlinear challenges, he emphasized, requires the nonlinear solutions that technology offers, and Africa should embrace Industry 4.0. The main question is how Africa can take advantage of Industry 4.0 while managing its unwelcome effects.

Paul Maseli, director of the New York Office and representative to the United Nations for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), then set the scene by emphasizing that policies for capitalizing on Industry 4.0 in Africa must be able to reconcile the tension between Africa’s current low state of industrial development and poor infrastructure with the high requirements of a digitalized economy.

Throughout the conversation, moderator Jake Bright, author & advisor and contributor on Africa for TechCrunch and Crunchbase, emphasized the theme of the event: “Industry 4.0 in Africa: Helping or hindering?” By raising concerns that skeptics of the future of industry hold—including the risks of growing unemployment due to automation—he challenged the panelists to explore the nuances of manufacturing trends in African’s Fourth Industrial Revolution. He also pushed for hard solutions to looming obstacles to the continent’s success.

Julius Akinyemi, entrepreneur-in-residence at the MIT Media Lab, agreed that connectivity, in particular, must be enhanced, as it not only enables citizens but also increases trust among them:

Susan Lund, partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, remarked that digitalization goes beyond just fintech (financial technology) applications. Indeed, research that big companies have done to better understand their markets can be done simply on the smartphone of a shopkeeper:

Mary Hallward-Driemeier, senior economic adviser, for finance, competitiveness, and innovation at the World Bank, delved deeply into the unique case of Ethiopia’s recent steps in industrialization. Though the country has seen a lot of success, the emphasis on state-led development has not yet created the spillovers needed to truly spark sustainable industrialization:

Chief of the Business Environment, Cluster & Innovation Division at the UNIDO Department of Trade, Investment & Innovation, Olga Memedovic, also remarked that for Africa to prepare for and harness the New Industrial Revolution, governments must invest beyond infrastructure and into the education and skills training of the continent’s youth.

      

 

 

By Brian Pinto

This week, the IMF and the World Bank will roll out their 2017 Low-Income Country Debt Sustainability Framework (LIC DSF). What should the DSF look like to be relevant for low-income developing countries (LIDCs) in Africa (listed in Annex Table 1 of the IMF’s March 2018 LIDC debt paper)? That’s a question I take on in my critique, where I conclude that the 2017 DSF is obsolete instead of the “significant overhaul” that is claimed.

Starting from scratch

The centerpiece should be a thorough analysis of public debt given the entrenched deterioration noted in the March 2018 LIDC debt paper. This would mean quantifying variables that drive debt relative to GDP: primary fiscal deficits and the interest rate-growth differential, as well as exchange rate risks, since over half of the debt is denominated in foreign currency. In addition, the contingent liabilities of banks and state-owned enterprises need to be factored in.

The next step would assess the composition and quality of government spending, the integrity of fiscal institutions and the public investment needed in infrastructure and human capital to meet the Sustainable Development Goals. The latter is bound to clash with debt sustainability even in the best-governed African LIDCs like Kenya and Rwanda.

One would then use simple macroeconomic accounting to establish that unsustainable public finances typically spill over into current account deficits, external debt, and foreign exchange reserves. These latter variables should be treated as symptoms of poorly managed public finances, where the fundamental problem lies.

The focus on public debt and its dynamics is dictated by the exigencies confronting African LIDCs and the donor community today:

• The need to reconcile debt sustainability and development in a situation where Official Development Assistance (ODA) is dwindling (see the March 2018 LIDC paper and the 2017 Report of the High Level Panel on reinvigorating African development finance) while public debt problems are intensifying and growth is slowing down. What matters is the sustainability of long-run growth and development for which debt sustainability is a necessary condition, not an end in itself.
• The need to reconsider the framework for ODA, including its pricing and allocation. There is considerable scope for this considering first that the market is increasingly defining the marginal borrowing cost for African LIDCs. And second, that concessionality after the HIPC-MDRI debt write off has led neither to sustainable public debt nor a solid foundation for long-run growth. Simply put, concessionality cannot offset the factors driving the deterioration in public debt dynamics noted in Felino and Pinto 2017 and the IMF’s March 2018 LIDC debt paper: weak public finance management systems, misuse of public resources, growth slowdowns, and currency collapses linked to economic and political risks. This calls for a tougher policy dialogue and a higher bar for access to ODA with the goal of igniting a race to the top instead of subsidizing weak policies and institutions.

The 2017 Bank-Fund Framework

This is what 2017 Low-Income Country Debt Sustainability Framework (LIC DSF) does:

• It retains the focus on PPG (public and publicly guaranteed) external debt of the original 2004-2005 framework. The framework identifies external debt distress episodes based on arrears or commercial debt restructuring. It runs a probit model to estimate the probability of distress, with explanatory variables that include a debt burden indicator (such as the ratio of the present value of PPG external debt to GDP or exports), the country’s growth rate, world growth rate, foreign exchange reserves and the Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) rating.
• Next, countries are classified as weak, medium or strong based on a composite of the CPIA and these variables, except for the debt burden indicator itself. Cutoff probabilities of debt distress that balance Type I (missed crises) with Type II (false alarms) errors are picked. The probit regression is inverted to get thresholds for each debt burden indicator for each country group, based on evenly spaced percentiles for the country composite indicator.
• The next step is to graft domestic public debt onto the thresholds for the present value of PPG external debt to get thresholds for total public debt. This is defined not as nominal public debt, but as the present value of PPG external debt plus nominal domestic debt.
• The final step is to come up with a rule for the level of debt distress by comparing the actual debt burden indicator with the thresholds derived for each country group.

What’s wrong with the 2017 LIC DSF?

First, the 2017 LIC DSF ignores the fact that unsustainable public finances are typically the fundamental cause of debt distress: indicators of public debt dynamics, such as primary fiscal deficits and the interest rate-growth differential (r-g), are completely absent in the probit model. Also missing are market signals on default and devaluation risks, such as Eurobond spreads or interest rates on local debt in excess of inflation targets, or credit ratings, that are relevant given the big shift to market debt.

Second, the focus on the present value of debt is outdated. Not only does this obfuscate debt dynamics because it makes (r-g) hard to interpret, it is inconsistently applied. Only concessional external debt is discounted, at an arbitrary discount rate of 5 percent; market debt, including Eurobonds and domestic debt, is taken at face value because it typically carries interest higher than 5 percent. Today, nominal debt makes more sense because of the profusion of different types of public debt—official concessional, market domestic debt, Eurobonds, and non-concessional bilateral loans—at different interest rates. It is their weighted average that is relevant for debt dynamics.

Third, there is no provision for the constant tussle between debt sustainability and development in economies that need huge investments in infrastructure and human capital, for them to grow and create jobs for their burgeoning youth populations—and reduce the instability from insecurity and mass migration.

It is clear from the 2017 Report of the High Level Panel on reinvigorating African development finance  that imaginative ways will need to be found to reconcile debt sustainability and development by using shrinking ODA better and taking on board the growing heterogeneity among African LIDCs. The debt sustainability problems in Ghana and Mozambique, for example, are due to misuse of public resources and weak fiscal institutions. In contrast, Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda face the prospects of unsustainable public debt and current account deficits because of big investments in infrastructure. The 2017 DSF doesn’t distinguish between the two.

An Illustration from Ethiopia

This January, the IMF and World Bank downgraded Ethiopia to high risk of external debt distress because one liquidity indicator—the ratio of PPG external debt service to exports—went above its threshold. This effectively shuts off Ethiopia’s access to non-concessional loans.

IMF Country Report No. 18/18 shows clearly that Ethiopia’s current account deficits (CAD) are driven by high fiscal deficits. In 2016-17, the trade deficit was 16.1 percent of GDP of which 13.1 percentage points was on account of the public sector deficit; less than a fifth was because of private borrowing. Net private transfers—mainly remittances—were 6.9 percent of GDP while official transfers were 1.8 percent. This meant that the “public” component of the current account balance was minus 11.3 percent of GDP, partially offset by the private component of plus 3.8 percent of GDP. If Ethiopia is at risk of external debt distress, the cause is its public finances—driven (mainly) by large infrastructure investments. But all the debt sustainability analysis (DSA) says is that public debt is below its threshold and does not “flag additional risks”.

A logical alternative would start with Ethiopia’s public debt dynamics, which superficially look good: the public debt-to-GDP ratio fell from 61 percent in 2014-15 to 54 percent in 2016-17 in spite of primary deficits of about 6 percent of GDP. But this was because of highly negative real interest rates, the result of financial repression and currency overvaluation, as shown in my critique. So the questions the Bank and IMF should be encouraging the Ethiopians to ask are:

• What would public debt dynamics look like without financial repression and currency overvaluation, which at present distort the private savings and investment choices?
• Will Ethiopia’s massive infrastructure investments actually spur future growth and taxes and ensure fiscal solvency?
• What international liquidity pressures are being caused by the spillovers from the fiscal deficits into external deficits?

The 2017 DSF would address only the third question. A more relevant DSA would start with nominal public debt-to-GDP dynamics while treating current account deficits, external debt and foreign exchange reserves as symptoms of public finance spillovers. It would analyze recent history in depth, with a short projection period to spotlight urgent policy reforms. This would minimize the temptation to build in excessively optimistic reform and growth scenarios, which—based on the IMF’s own studies, see for example the March 2018 LIDC debt paper and Mooney and de Soyres 2017—seldom materialize. Finally, by facilitating collaboration among governments, multilateral finance institutions and bilateral donors, such a framework would help to reconcile Africa’s debt sustainability concerns with its sizeable development needs.

      

 

 

By Shruti Godbole

Notions of being prosperous and developed are changing around the world. The concepts of Gross National Happiness and United Nations’ World Happiness Report are gradually gaining momentum. In his February 2018 budget speech, Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley also outlined his government’s priority on ensuring ‘ease of living’. New Zealand is at the forefront of this issue, with plans to be one of the first countries in the world to measure its success against how it performs socially, culturally and environmentally.

Brookings India and the New Zealand High Commission co-hosted a discussion with Gabriel Makhlouf, Secretary and Chief Executive to the Treasury of New Zealand and Dr. Shamika Ravi, Senior Fellow and Director of Research at Brookings India and Member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council. The discussion was moderated by Mr. Dhruva Jaishankar, Fellow for Foreign Policy at Brookings India.

It has taken six to seven years for New Zealand’s government to develop a living standards framework. The framework can be broadly understood in terms of four economic capitals – natural, social, financial, and physical. These capitals are meant to enhance intergenerational well-being. Emphasis is also being laid on ensuring a sustainable growth for these capitals, leading to overall growth in the economy. The Treasury has been tasked with listing the indicators and assessing the state of the four economic capitals. The government will then allocate a budget based on this assessment.

It is challenging to quantify some of the economic capitals. Social capital depends on the degree of trust people have in institutional bodies, which is difficult to measure. With natural capital, it is difficult to gauge what to measure and where to draw the boundaries. While measuring human capital in terms of education and skills is a challenge, health and especially mental health, is particularly critical. It is complicated by the fact that mental health data is often not available or is of questionable quality. One of the key challenges is to create awareness among the public and ensure practical implementation of this framework. There is a need to integrate a broader conception of economics into public policy discourse.

There is an urgent need to rethink India’s statistical capacity. While India does possess robust data systems, it does not have the capacity to collect real-time data which is critical for policy interventions.

India, in comparison to New Zealand, is far behind in terms of measuring well-being. Human development has shown a gradual improvement over time with conscious efforts by the government to improve human development indicators through Sustainable Development Goals, etc. The next budget may become the first budget to focus on gender and children. Going beyond the basic understanding of GDP as an indicator, health and education are also being recognised as indicators of well-being. While these indicators require a certain degree of ordering, emphasis is also being given to quality of public health and education services. It is important to note that in a diverse country like India, quality and functioning varies drastically across states. This variance can affect real-time decision making. Therefore, there is an urgent need to rethink India’s statistical capacity. While India does possess robust data systems, it does not have the capacity to collect real-time data which is critical for policy interventions.

Until now, the definition of growth has been understood rather narrowly, mostly in terms of fiscal policy. India is now on the way to being self-sufficient in terms of hard infrastructure that traditionally signified growth. It now needs to consider cultural growth, as well as problems of health and education in terms of quality of education, stunted growth, malnutrition, obesity, etc. For example, mental health is an important concern for all modern societies. Because mental health data is scarce in India, it is important to move beyond institutional data to formulate policy. Much more attention needs to be focused on improving health indicators among women and children in particular.

Many argue that the new indicators for wellbeing seem more relevant and applicable to developed countries like New Zealand. However, a strong case can be made for adapting the framework broadly to developing countries like India as well. For example, issues like poverty and nutrition among children are common to New Zealand and India.  Ultimately, the quality of data plays a key role in policy formulation and implementation. While politicisation of data is an issue, institutional trust in organisations that collect and disseminate this data is critical and can be generated over a period of time.

Manasi Rao and Yamini Sharma, research interns at Brookings India, contributed to this report.

      

 

 

By Homi Kharas, John McArthur, Krista Rasmussen

Ministers are gathering next week in New York at the United Nations’ High Level Political Forum to discuss progress being made on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The goals are intentionally inspirational; promises made by all countries to their citizens to improve the prospects for people, planet, and prosperity. In recent research, we have been examining the SDG targets that squarely focus on measurable improvements in people’s lives—to ensure no one is left behind. We wanted to understand how many people the world is currently on track to help by 2030, and how many people the world is on a path to leave behind. The research is still in progress, but we wanted to share some preliminary results, in advance of the U.N. discussions next week. A synopsis of key figures is available here.

Our study focuses on 21 “people-focused” SDG targets—those expressed in terms of measurable outcomes for a quantifiable number of people. Importantly, we distinguish between types of targets across two dimensions. First, we segment targets defined in absolute terms (e.g., ending extreme poverty, measured by a zero poverty headcount rate) from those defined in relative terms (e.g., cutting traffic deaths by half). Second, we distinguish between targets focused on “life and death” issues (e.g., child mortality, non-communicable disease mortality) and those focused on “basic needs” that are essential for a decent quality of life (e.g., proper nutrition, access to sanitation, gender equality of opportunity). We note that this approach is not able to address other important geography-based SDG environmental questions (e.g., climate change, oceans) or aggregation-based outcomes (e.g., Gini measures of inequality or economic growth).

Our methodology allows us to estimate how each country and issue—and in turn the world—is doing compared to the ambitions enshrined in the SDG target. Below we describe three of the key findings so far.

Only a few SDG cups are half-full

For each indicator, we estimate how many people are on course to have the relevant problem solved by the SDG deadline. Figure 1 shows the results for the basic needs indicators. The green portion of each horizontal bar represents the share of aggregate world progress by 2030 compared to a hypothetical baseline of no progress after 2015. Only four of these indicators—extreme poverty, access to electricity, malaria incidence, and Hepatitis B incidence, are on track to deliver at least half the needed progress and many are on track to deliver much less. A similar chart for life-and-death indicators (see attachment) shows that only child mortality is on track to cover more than half the distance to the goal. Meanwhile, the negative values in the bottom two bars of Figure 1 show that air pollution and child obesity are on track to worsen by 2030, requiring a turnaround to achieve the SDG vision.

Figure 1: World performance on basic needs SDG targets by 2030 under business-as-usual

Forty million lives are currently at stake

Another part of our analysis estimates how many lives and how many people’s needs are at stake today, as of mid-2018, when comparing the SDGs to recent trends. Figure 2 shows our best current estimate of the number of lives at stake on six indicators. On each issue, this is the difference between the cumulative number of deaths if recent country-level trends continue out to the SDG deadline and the number of deaths if each country achieves the relevant target. Overall, more than 40 million lives are at stake. This is comprised of more than 25 million people under age 70 who will otherwise die from non-communicable diseases (mostly cardiovascular disease and cancer); more than 9 million children under-5 and 1 million mothers who will die of preventable causes; and more than 4 million people who will die of suicide, homicide, and traffic deaths. A corresponding chart for basic needs at stake (included in attachment) shows that hundreds of millions of people’s basic needs are at stake on many indicators, and in some cases billions of people’s needs (e.g., for air pollution, sanitation, and gender equality in leadership opportunities).

Figure 2: Life-and-death targets: 40 million lives at stake, cumulative 2018-2030

A handful of countries are home to the largest numbers of people being left behind

After considering the world’s trends on each indicator, we also examine how each country is doing on the same issues. This allows us to estimate, under current trends, which countries will still have the furthest distance to cover by 2030 on both the absolute and relative targets. It also allows us to estimate which countries are home to the largest number of people being left behind on each issue. Figure 3 shows the results for the absolute indicators. Red squares represent the “Top 5” countries on each indicator, i.e., the five largest concentrations of people on course to be left behind as of 2030. The number within each cell represents the implied share of the remaining problem: e.g., in the first column, Nigeria is on course to be home to 25 percent of the world’s remaining extreme poverty by 2030.

The concentration of red cells at the top of the table accentuates the global concentration of extreme deprivation-related issues in a handful of populous countries. However, the dispersion of red squares across the matrix helps draw attention to a complementary truth: large numbers of people are being left behind across many countries on many issues. The United States, for example, ranks in the Top 5 for child obesity, lack of access to family planning, and lack of opportunity for women in public leadership. Our findings suggest that no country, at any level of average income, is on track to reach all the SDG targets by 2030. Everyone has problems that need to see faster progress.

Figure 3: Share of lives (and needs) at stake on each absolute indicator, by country

The next mile

When SDG policy leaders gather in New York next week, there will undoubtedly be some sentiments of celebration. Amid a turbulent period in international cooperation, the SDGs have increasingly offered a ballast—a stable reference point helping more than 100 countries to report on their own common and collective policy challenges at the High Level Political Forum. In just the few years since 2015, the world has come a long way in forging a more outcome-oriented shared policy agenda. But our results show just how far the world still needs to go in order to deliver on that policy promise.

Authors’ note: We underscore that the results included here are still preliminary and subject to refinement. Reader feedback and questions are all warmly welcome!

      

 

 

By Rohan Laik

Sahil Gandhi is Assistant Professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, where he teaches urban economics and other courses. He was formerly a Fellow at ICRIER, New Delhi. His research interests are in the areas of urbanisation in India, land and housing markets, and institutional economics. His research has been published as chapters in edited books, and as academic articles in Cities, Environment and Urbanization, Environment and Urbanization Asia, Public Finance and Management, India Review and Economic and Political Weekly. He has a PhD in Economics from University of Mumbai.

      

 

 

By Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah

The problem with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), was that no one ever lost their job for failing to meet an MDG target.

When I say this at high-level meetings, participants shift uneasily in their seats. Their unease really shows when I ask why, if we truly want the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to succeed, would we not hold accountable those of us in governments, intergovernmental agencies, global business, or civil society organizations (CSOs) responsible for achieving them—even to the point that our jobs would depend on it?

My provocation seems absurd because we do not (yet) see the SDGs as having real political bite. They are not legally binding, their complexity and interconnectedness make apportioning blame (or credit) difficult, and they arise out of an intergovernmental system that seems ineffective at accountability.

To me, one of the key priorities, especially for civil society working on sustainable development, is to deliver an accountability revolution.

Civil society at every level—from local to national to global—needs to play its oversight or watchdog role effectively. We need to make sure that ambitious goals are not watered down or cherry-picked, and that states embrace the new universalist, human rights-based approach that is required of them.

Holding governments and the private sector to account will be essential.

One example of how civil society can drive accountability is through investment in data. The MDGs achieved something remarkable by entrenching the idea of measuring progress through robust metrics, partly to measure effectiveness for donors, but more importantly, to promote greater accountability on international development objectives. The SDGs may follow in the tradition of the MDGs, but their requirements in terms of volume, complexity, and breadth of data go far beyond anything previously attempted in the development sector.

SDG metrics are still in their infancy, but already there is widespread consensus that significant investment in the capacity of all development actors—including citizens—to generate, use, and curate data is crucial. If we are to have any hope of achieving the new vision, robust new metrics, fed by nothing less than a data revolution, will be essential.

With over 200 distinct indicators to quantify, measuring progress toward the SDGs is a daunting task, but one that comes with opportunity: the opportunity to create a new approach to monitoring and accountability that puts citizens at its core. New forms of citizen-generated data—produced by people, or their organizations, to monitor, demand, or drive change on issues that affect them—will revolutionize the successful implementation of this agenda.

New technologies offer exciting new ways for citizens to generate and use data democratically and creatively. Citizen-generated data can monitor commitments made by governments, as in the case of Promise Tracker in Brazil. They can feed evidence from the ground up into higher-level policy debates as the ocean litter program Dive Against Debris is doing. Importantly, data can verify official narratives and datasets, empowering people and giving them a way to actively engage with political processes that might otherwise seem far removed (for example, Float Beijing in China, which allows citizens to monitor local air quality themselves).

For CSOs involved in sustainable development, the SDGs present some significant challenges and opportunities. In an era of disintermediation and disruption of existing power dynamics, no longer can it be assumed that a few, relatively well-resourced international NGOs will be at the leading edge of citizen action around sustainable development. We need a new set of actors, including many more grounded in local action—whether it is the soup kitchen in the developed world or the women’s rights organization in the developing world—who can effectively translate a global agenda to local issues and, in turn, feed local concerns into global monitoring frameworks.

Promoting such trans-local action will increase the chances of civil society raising political pressure on both local actors (who will feel the power of locally led mobilization) and global actors (who will see evidence grounded in local realities) to act. Indeed, broadening participation in this process beyond the relatively few CSOs who are currently active around the SDGs to a wider set of civil society actors will be critical to delivering any sort of accountability revolution.

Successfully implementing the 17 SDGs requires a new way of working with more meaningful multi-stakeholder partnerships. Members of civil society need to play their rightful and multifaceted roles in sustainable development–as campaigners, as generators of data, as implementers, and as innovators. Part of their role is to convince key power-holders—from government officials to business leaders—that they are ultimately answerable to citizens for the delivery of Agenda 2030.

That is, their jobs depend on it.

      

 

 

By Joshua P. Meltzer, Christina Constantine

Infrastructure and Climate Change

The world’s core infrastructure—including our transport and energy systems, buildings, industry, and land-related activities—produce more than 60 percent of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally. At the same time, the world has significant infrastructure needs. From 2015-2030, approximately $90 trillion of infrastructure investment is needed, a doubling of the global capital stock.

Yet, unless the new infrastructure is low-carbon and climate resilient (LCR), the world will be locked into a high-carbon pathway and will miss the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping the global average temperature increase well below 2 degrees Celsius by 2050. LCR infrastructure includes renewable energy, mass transit, and energy efficiency.

Meeting LCR infrastructure needs will require an additional $13.5 trillion in renewable energy and energy efficiency. Moreover, infrastructure investment consistent with the below 2 degree scenario will also require a reallocation of investment, with less investment in carbon intensive infrastructure and less infrastructure needed due to more compact cities. In fact, the net increase in needed LCR infrastructure is around $4 trillion over 15 years. And this does not take into account savings from lower operating costs of LCR infrastructure, estimated at around $5 trillion. These figures underscore the broader point that there is no inherent trade-off between building LCR infrastructure and development.

Infrastructure and Development

Whether the world builds LCR infrastructure will also determine whether the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are achieved. Around 70 percent of LCR infrastructure needs are in developing countries. Building LCR infrastructure links the climate and development agendas in multiple ways. For one, the poorest and most vulnerable people in developing countries are feeling the impact of climate change most acutely. This link between climate change and poverty is reflected in the SDGs, which recognize addressing climate change as a development outcome.

Infrastructure also has a direct effect on development. For instance, building renewable energy production instead of coal-fired power plants can reduce air pollution and produce better health outcomes. And building compact cities with access to mass transit affects access to other key services such as health and education.

Financing LCR infrastructure—the need for increased private investment

A key challenge is financing the needed LCR infrastructure. Because public finances are constrained, 35-50 percent of incremental infrastructure investment will need to come from the private sector.

Another reason to increase private investment into infrastructure is to harness the efficiency gains from private sector construction and operation of such infrastructure.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of private capital globally: institutional investors have $85 trillion in assets under management and expect to have over $110 trillion by 2020. Yet, current allocations from institutional investors into infrastructure are low—approximately 1 percent of total asset allocations. There is also a shortage of other private capital for infrastructure, particularly LCR infrastructure in developing countries.

The lack of investment in infrastructure is due to infrastructure risks and other barriers. Moreover, LCR infrastructure carries particular risks. These include limited investment track records for new climate technologies, and reliance on government support such as feed-in-tariffs or subsidies. LCR infrastructure risks are also higher in developing countries, where there is greater political instability, poor investment environments, and currency risks.

In addition, the lack of carbon price and fossil fuel subsidies effectively subsidize investments in carbon-intensive infrastructure. As a result, the full social costs of such investments—the negative climate and development impacts—are not properly reflected in these investment decisions.

LCR infrastructure risks also vary over the project lifecycle. Risks are high in the early project preparation stage due to challenges with developing complex infrastructure plans and obtaining permits. As project construction commences, risks grow due to macroeconomic and business uncertainties, as well as possible construction delays, permit cancellations, and sudden shifts in the availability of finance. Only once the project is operational does cash flow turn positive, risks decline, and it can deliver a return on investment.

A consequence of these LCR infrastructure risks is that the cost of capital climbs and finance becomes scarce. This, in turn, stymies LCR infrastructure projects and diverts investment into what is often lower cost, higher-carbon alternatives.

Addressing these LCR infrastructure investment challenges requires aligning public and private finance in a manner that allows the full risks to be borne.

Blending finance for LCR Infrastructure

Combining sources of public finance—such as from multilateral development banks (MDBs) and climate funds—is a form of blended finance that can reduce risk, lower the cost of capital, and crowd-in private sector capital into LCR projects.

The MDBs have the knowledge and financial position to play a central role in blending their own capital with climate finance to reduce risk and crowd-in private sector capital. The MDBs are increasing their climate investments, yet they face constraints in terms of the amount of finance they can provide and the risks they can accept.

The main multilateral climate funds (MCF) are the Climate Investment Funds, the Green Climate Fund, and the Global Environment Facility, which are all blended finance facilities designed to co-finance with other public and private sources of capital.

The MCF can have the greatest impact by addressing financing barriers to LCR infrastructure by providing small amounts of highly concessional finance alongside other public finance to reduce risk and crowd-in private capital into transformative LCR projects.

While MDBs are also a source of concessional finance, the MCF lend at even more concessional rates, particularly to middle-income countries where climate and LCR infrastructure needs are most acute.

A key focus for MDB and MCF is to improve countries’ enabling environments, which can reduce LCR infrastructure risk across the infrastructure project lifecycle. This includes strengthening countries’ investment environment and institutional capacity. The MDBs make such investments to improve development outcomes, including more targeted support under the Global Infrastructure Facility. Yet, even here, such investments do not necessarily support LCR infrastructure. This is where the MCF can boost country-level capacity to assess LCR alternatives and build a pipeline of LCR infrastructure projects, develop the capacity to use best available climate technology, and build consideration of the below 2 degree Celsius climate goal into the project preparation stage.

Larger amounts of finance are needed at the project construction phase and it is at this point that high costs of capital can render infrastructure projects financially unfeasible. Here, blending finance from the MDBs and the MCF can reduce risks to attract private sector capital into transformative climate technologies in developing countries.

Moreover, as the MDBs ramp-up their climate financing and are guided by the cascade approach to finance, which emphasizes risk mitigation before direct loans, the MCF should be prepared and able to address the remaining financing gaps.

      

 

 

By Mahmoud Mohieldin, Nritya Subramaniam, Jos Verbeek

The global economy has transformed significantly since the establishment of the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), mainly due to globalization and the evolution of country-driven development strategies. These transformations have led to the general acceptance of private sector and private international finance as key to economic development. Thus, MDBs will need to form partnerships with the private sector to catalyze private finance for development well into the 21st century.

An evolving development landscape

While initially focused on providing funding, the MDBs have evolved into institutions that provide cutting edge knowledge products about development at the global, regional, country, and local levels, and help build capacities to manage interrelated development processes. Traditionally, the MDBs, have focused on the implications of global policies in developing countries in areas such as trade, debt relief, poverty alleviation, economic growth, and environmental protection by working directly with governments and government agencies. The MDBs play a seminal role in promoting economic and financial stability, and advocate for global public goods in several international fora including the Group of 20 (G-20) and Group of 7 (G-7). Consequently, the MDBs play a vital and well-suited role to help countries achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and address the challenges posed by the 2030 Agenda.

The attainment of the SDGs requires a mountain of resources that cannot be gathered through traditional sources of funding, be it Official Development Assistance or MDBs’ resources. Trillions of dollars are required annually to reach the SDGs by 2030. This is well beyond the ability of international financial institutions, including MDBs. To implement the 2030 Agenda, the role of MDBs must shift from transferring resources to mobilizing them. Hence, private sector financing and investments are vital for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and achievement of the SDGs.

Crowding in the private sector

The role of the private sector has gained momentum, and a core challenge for the MDBs is to open up opportunities for them. The MDBs are adept at serving as intermediaries between countries that need to invest in development projects and private finance. They have a sterling track record in aiding countries enhance their national capabilities for project and public investments, and they also provide assurance that disputes are settled in an impartial manner.

The MDBs could bring the private financial sector on board through an ex-ante and ex-post engagement as financier or co-financier of projects. Both the ex-ante and ex-post approaches entail innovative and new types of partnerships between the MDBs, governments, and the private sector. To succeed in this endeavor, the MDBs will have to modify their operational approaches and the internal staff incentive structures.

Two channels that MDBs can utilize to augment the role of the private sector are to assist governments in creating conditions for appropriate market-oriented growth, and collaborate with the private sector and increase private capital flows by becoming participant investors. Conversely, to successfully partner with the private sector, the MDBs must improve their expertise in various aspects of international banking, adapt to the flexibility and confidentiality required of private sector operations, and develop a new risk culture and the knowledge base for commercial risk analysis.

The comparative advantage of the MDBs in this partnership is that they possess a capital structure that permits them to operate in high-risk environments, and their relationship with developing-country governments enables them to reduce political risks in a manner that the private international financial sector appears unable to do. Governments tend to have more faith in a project when there is a partnership between the private sector and an MDB, which is duty bound to protect its members’ interests. The success of MDB collaboration with the private sector involves judicious design and implementation, as well as the allocation of the intertwined risks (political, regulatory, and commercial).

Cascade and Maximizing Finance for Development

The World Bank Group has pioneered an approach of pursuing private sector solutions for attaining development goals while reserving public finance for critical areas where private sector involvement is not optimal or available. With a view to enhancing its commitment to Maximizing Finance for Development (MFD), the World Bank introduced (in March 2017) the “cascade approach,” a concept that leverages private sector financing and solutions. If public debt and contingent liabilities are limited, then private solutions are promoted, and if not, then the option of public finance is pursued while upholding environmental, social and fiscal standards, and good governance criteria.

The cascade approach serves as a complement to domestic resource mobilization and enhances the effectiveness of public finance. MFD dovetails with the WBG private sector arm International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) strategy to “create markets” as well as the World Bank risk guarantee arm Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency’s 2020 strategy. MFD reinforces regulatory or policy frameworks, champions competition, and develops local capital markets. Operationalization of the cascade approach requires effective cross-WBG coordination and systematic efforts to equip staff with guidance, resources, training, and monitoring to scale up and integrate MFD into World Bank operations and its engagement with clients. The MFD approach has been piloted in nine countries: Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Nepal, and Vietnam. The cascade approach, if implemented across all MDBs, will facilitate a paradigm shift in the way the MDBs operate.

Portfolio approach and managing risks

Often institutional investors’ margins are so thin that the cost of acquiring the knowledge and relevant expertise to analyze and evaluate development projects might render financing development less attractive, if not impossible. Hence, to ensure that institutional investors participate in financing development, the cascade approach needs to be complemented by a mechanism that permits the private financial sector to buy into the portfolio of the MDBs, ex-ante, or prior to the preparation and implementation of the project, and/or ex-post, or after the project has been fully disbursed. This “portfolio approach” is a method through which the MDBs can mobilize and catalyze financial resources from institutional investors.

Bankable projects do not emerge out of thin air. MDBs need to scale up the use of the in-house expertise to prepare and implement projects while also transferring this expertise through technical assistance to country governments. Technical assistance can also be provided to the private sector in developing countries (through, for example, advisory services by IFC) to prepare projects that are of interest to foreign investors, be it financial or physical investments.

Investments need de-risking for the private sector but also for the public sector. Part of the de-risking will be quality preparation and implementation of projects, but also through proper management of exposure, including contingent liabilities, that are created through the various forms of public-private partnerships. In the cascade approach, these will emerge directly between governments and the private sector. In the portfolio approach, the risks will emerge on the balance sheets of the MDBs. The recent capital increase for IBRD and IFC will greatly assist in this matter.

Indeed, developing countries should not underestimate the risks associated with the cascade and portfolio approaches. Thus, the MDBs should actively assist developing countries with project management, including preparation, implementation, and supervision of projects. They should also provide assistance in public investment management and risk management, including guarantees and implications of public private partnerships for debt management. In addition, the MDBs need to take the lead in preparing the classes of assets that can be offered under the portfolio approach to the financial markets.

The MDBs must collectively own the 2030 Agenda to mobilize private finance for development, otherwise achieving the SDGs will not be possible. The partnership between the MDBs, governments, and the private sector holds great promise, and if the each of the stakeholders does their part, we move closer to reaching the ambitious SDGs.

      

 

 

By Fred Dews, Bill Finan, Homi Kharas, Enric Sala

Homi Kharas, interim vice president and director of the Global Economy and Development program, and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Enric Sala discuss some of the innovative approaches for reaching the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals proposed in a new book, “From Summits to Solutions,” published by the Brookings Institution Press.

Also in this episode, Molly Reynolds describes the actions members of Congress could take to rebuke President Trump’s comments from a recent press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Related content: 

Book: From Summits to Solutions: Innovations in Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals

Event: From summits to solutions: Innovations in implementing the sustainable development goals

—

Thanks to audio producer Gaston Reboredo with assistance from Mark Hoelscher, and to producers Brennan Hoban and Chris McKenna. Additional support comes from Jessica Pavone, Eric Abalahin, Camilo Ramirez, and Emily Horne.

Subscribe to Brookings podcasts here or on Apple Podcasts, send feedback email to BCP@Brookings.edu, and follow us and tweet us at @policypodcasts on Twitter.

The Brookings Cafeteria is a part of the Brookings Podcast Network.

      

 

 

By Homi Kharas

If the U.S. is to exercise global leadership with its foreign assistance, it should view its contributions and support through a Sustainable Development Goals lens. This would reinforce the long-standing principle of U.S. assistance that it respect universal country ownership rather than a U.S. driven agenda.

Almost three years have passed since the Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2030 were adopted by 193 countries at the United Nations General Assembly. Since then, focus has switched to implementation. Here the news is not good. Indicators of 14 out of 16 targets directly related to individuals (like poverty, education, or child mortality) are unlikely to get more than half way to their agreed 2030 endpoint. Child obesity is headed in the wrong direction. Violence against women may only reach 10 percent of the target level.¹ It has become commonplace to say that “business-as-usual” will not suffice, but it is less easy to be clear about what needs to change, whose actions need to change, and how can change be organized.

There is an urgency to SDG implementation. Time is running out. If the estimated trends do not change, many lives will be lost or damaged, and, in the longer-run, development trajectories for the next few decades will be adversely affected. A narrow window of opportunity that exists today is closing.

Consider the following: more infrastructure will be put in place in the next 15 years than the entire stock of the world’s current infrastructure. Make it low carbon and sustainable, and the worst effects of climate change can be averted. From a different perspective, think about the fact that more people are now moving to cities than ever before, or than ever will again. Plan cities smartly, in terms of inclusive public services, transport and land-use, and inequality in our societies can be reduced. Also, reflect on the demographic bulge unfolding in Africa, the last place on earth where the number of children will expand over the next 15 years. Only by keeping these children alive, healthy and skilled can we avoid a generation being left behind.

In each case, choices made now and over the next fifteen years will lock in carbonization, urbanization, and demographic trends that will shape the future of humanity for decades to come.

If there is to be change, someone has to lead it. The U.S. can and should resume its role as leading the world towards sustainable development. U.S. citizens agree: in 2017, two-thirds responded “yes” to the question “Do you think it will be best for the future of the country if we take an active part in world affairs?”² The U.S. should align its foreign assistance with the SDGs and, using that framework, build local and international coalitions with a range of government and non-government actors, including business, civil society and academia. To do that, it should consider:

• What the Federal or local government needs to do to get the U.S.’ own house in order.
• How to catalyze and partner with the U.S. corporate sector, non-governmental organizations and
  civil society.
• Where to engage internationally.

What the federal and local governments need to do domestically

Global leadership on sustainable development should begin with credible domestic action. Agenda 2030 is universal and, between 2016 and 2018, 112 countries have submitted voluntary national reviews of their implementation plans at the U.N.’s High Level Political Forum. The U.S. is not among them. The domestic SDG agenda for the U.S. (and indeed for most other countries) can be distilled into three broad action areas:

1. reinvigorate the long-term trend of overall economic growth;
2. re-couple economic progress with social well-being, and;
3. de-couple economic growth from environmental “bads” (pollution, carbon emissions).

The U.S. is not faring well on any of these. Growth is picking up, but, according to IMF forecasts, this is cyclical. Real GDP growth could accelerate this year and next to levels just shy of 3 percent thanks to the fiscal stimulus, but this will dissipate, and growth is projected to return to 1.4 percent (0.6 percent per capita) by 2023. On the need for re-coupling, the gulf between growth and well-being is well-illustrated by stories of opioid use and rising suicides occurring alongside economic recovery. De-coupling of environmental bads has been thrown into question by the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the weakening of fuel economy standards and other environmental regulations that the Trump Administration believes are constraining growth. The growth/environment policy trade-off is tilting back toward growth.

The SDGs provide a frame for analyzing and tackling these issues in a coherent way to improve the chances of sustainable long-term progress. Indeed, the U.S. would do well to learn from the SDG-related processes of other countries.

As a start, a stocktaking of the current situation is revealing. A recent review of national baselines on SDG indicators warns that the U.S. must overcome major challenges to meet 12 of the 17 goals.³ In this, the U.S. is not alone. No country is on-track to meet all the goals. Yet other countries have set in train a process for action. They have requested their statistical offices to identify and monitor key indicators, adopted a national action plan for implementation, or at least modified or aligned an existing national plan or program with the SDGs. They have undertaken an assessment of a baseline and trajectories to identify the largest gaps and priority actions. Every G20 country, with two exceptions—the United States and Russia—has followed, or plans to follow, each of these steps. To be fair, the U.S. has set in place a national reporting platform to identify and update sustainable development statistics,⁴ but two-thirds of proposed indicators still require improvements or further exploration of the data.

Local mayors and governors are at the forefront when it comes to leading the domestic SDG agenda, rather than the federal government. New York City presented the first Voluntary Local Review to the U.N.’s High Level Political Forum in July. Other cities are joining in the effort. Los Angeles has undertaken Global Ambition, Local Action (GALA), a public commitment to the SDGs, and, through a partnership with Occidental College is mapping and prioritizing against the goals. Both Baltimore and San Jose have developed plans consistent with the U.S. Cities SDG Index developed by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).⁵ In the SDSN U.S. Cities Index, common challenges for all U.S. cities include eradicating poverty (Goal 1), healthy food and diets (Goal 2), health and wellbeing for all (Goal 3), gender equality (Goal 5), providing affordable and clean energy for all (Goal 7), reducing inequality (Goal 10), and climate action (Goal 13).

On climate action, in particular, the We Are Still In campaign has attracted the support of local political and civic leaders representing over half the U.S. population, and significant local government participation is expected at the Global Climate Action Summit in California in September. This activist groundswell could provide a springboard for broadening the local agenda to take on other aspects of the SDGs, including social equity and inclusiveness issues.

Partnering with business

Sustainability concerns have become deeply embedded in many large corporations that now systematically look at business risks and opportunities stemming from climate change, pollution, decent work, and product safety. Indeed, in the U.S., businesses are moving way ahead of the government. About 80 percent of the companies listed in the S&P 500 now report publicly on their sustainability performance, and a growing number of companies are starting to align their sustainability strategies with the SDGs.⁶ The issue, then, is not reporting individual company performance per se, but to set common standards, establish industry-wide goals, and develop comparable metrics to drive greater competition and impact at the company level.

The U.S. could be taking the lead in these areas, especially given the power of its financial institutions and intermediaries and the global footprint of its largest corporations. The prize is substantial. The Business and Sustainable Development Commission (2017) identified $12 trillion in new market opportunities in just four economic systems—food and agriculture, cities, energy and materials, and health and well-being. Banks seem to agree—setting an example, Bank of America, JPMorganChase, and Citigroup have made combined commitments to facilitate at least $50 billion per year in green finance through 2025. The competition to be sustainable will affect companies’ long-term ability to attract and retain talent, as well as their ability to build consumer loyalty and remain globally competitive.

Increasingly, attention is shifting to the role of investors. A growing body of evidence suggests that high-rated environmental, social, and (corporate) governance (ESG) companies are more profitable, have less volatility and risk, and have higher price/earnings valuations.⁷ Outside the U.S., some investors, like Swiss Re, have begun shifting their entire portfolio towards ESG indices. With several ESG indices outperforming other benchmarks, ESG-based benchmarks could become a new standard for performance. This could trigger a wave of change. One Forbes analyst argues that, when 10 percent of top investors start to focus on system-level issues around sustainability, it generates attention among all stakeholders. When 30 percent of top investors focus on sustainability, there could be a culture change within the financial community. When a two-thirds threshold is reached, there will be systemic change.⁸

What is emerging from these and other studies is a new narrative of business and sustainability, one that recognizes that long-term profits and good performance on material non-financial aspects of business go hand in hand. Even in the world of impact investing, the vast majority (85 percent) of respondents believe there is no need to accept financial returns that are substantially below market in exchange for better ESG impact—the two simply go together.

The idea that private business can contribute substantially to global progress on the SDGs is one that the U.S. should embrace and encourage. U.S. reporting standards, like the industry-specific disclosures recommended by the Sustainable Accounting Standards Board, could be adopted by more companies as the format to be used in Form 10-K filings that provide annual reports on firms’ financial performance. While the Securities and Exchange Commission has not issued specific guidance on disclosures, this is partly because of the view that rapidly changing technology and data availability can alter management’s discussion and analysis of financial conditions. Given the rapid pace of change, standards should evolve over time rather than be restricted to a standardized format. Nevertheless, greater comparability across firms would help provide valuable benchmarking information for management and for investors. The Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures provides guidance to companies on what constitutes effective financial disclosures across industries.⁹

Several countries are developing their own standards for sustainability reporting. The European Commission’s High Level Expert Group on sustainable finance made recommendations in early 2018 to pension funds to “proactively seek and incorporate” beneficiary preferences in their decision making. China has become the largest global issuer of green bonds and is pushing aggressively to set standards for compulsory disclosure of listed company environmental performance.

The U.S. government also works with U.S. companies and entrepreneurs to advance technology breakthroughs for development. The Development Innovation Ventures program of USAID uses a venture capital model to conceive, test, and scale new technologies in global health, trade, energy, food security, and other sectors. NGOs, universities, companies and social enterprises have partnered through this program. Its future, however, is uncertain.

The absence of strong U.S. initiatives could mean that U.S. businesses lose any first-mover advantages from setting global standards, developing new business models for development, or blending finance in novel ways.

Engaging internationally

The U.S. has been the largest aid donor in the world, by some considerable margin, ever since World War II, based in part on the highly successful experience with the Marshall Plan. From this vantage point, the U.S. was responsible for the creation of the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD, the Global Fund, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and other institutions. It is also the dominant shareholder in the World Bank and the major regional development banks.

This U.S. leadership, however, has been eroded by a shake-up in the international development financing architecture. First, as illustrated in the figure that follows, official aid has become a far smaller share of the external financing for SDG investments.¹⁰ Second, non-aid sources of finance, particularly market-priced loans from official agencies, have become important. The U.S. has not had a large presence in these nongrant forms of development finance. For example, the foremost U.S. official lending institution, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), announced only $3.7 billion in new commitments for FY16, a small fraction of the total flows to developing countries. Across all official lending agencies, net U.S. lending was negative $1.4 billion in 2016—that is, U.S. public lending institutions reduced their exposure to the developing world.¹¹

China, by contrast, has encouraged its two large public banks, the China Development Bank and the China ExIm Bank, to lend more to developing countries. These two institutions alone had outstanding foreign loans of about $675 billion in 2016. The Bank for International Settlements reported that total Chinese cross-border claims amounted to $970 billion in Q2, 2017. (This includes claims on developed country counterparties, but it appears that for a significant number of African and emerging and developing countries in Asia, Chinese banks are the main lenders.¹²)

External Financing for SDG Investments in 2016: US$576.2 billion

A project-by-project compilation of Chinese development financing suggests that loans and credits reached $37 billion in 2014, and this would seem conservative. At that level, Chinese financing would be significantly larger than the $30 billion provided annually by the U.S. and very different in its composition. U.S. flows are primarily grants, and considerable amounts (about one-third) flow through multilateral organizations. Chinese flows are mostly loans that flow directly through Chinese institutions.¹³ (The same pattern shows up in other emerging economies. India, for example, disbursed about $10 billion in development financing in 2016, to 63 countries, with the vast majority being lines of credit.)

There are also major differences between the U.S. and China in terms of the intended purpose of their development finance. The U.S. gives substantial humanitarian aid (over $6 billion per year) to wherever it is needed in the world. China is focused on infrastructure lending within carefully selected countries of strategic interest. China’s signature initiative for development finance is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), currently accounting for about one-third of its aid. The scale and scope of the plan is enormous, with financing gaps of over $100 billion per year in participating countries. China alone will not fill these funding gaps, but the BRI offers some insight that lack of demand will not be the key constraint on China’s development finance.

Beyond the BRI, China has invested significantly in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in Latin America. There is considerable debate as to the quality and impact of these investments. On the negative side, arguments run from complaints that Chinese foreign investments are motivated more by a need to off-load slack in its domestic construction industry through overseas infrastructure projects rather than to meet developmental purposes, to the lack of attention to ESG standards and maintenance in the use of the assets being built, to the dangers posed by high debt levels linked to Chinese finance. On the positive side, analysts point to the fact that workers in China-sponsored projects are largely African, the loans extended to governments are not predatory loans, and there is little evidence of land grabs.¹⁴ Some countries like Ethiopia have used Chinese investments to sharply increase public investment and generate favorable growth dynamics. It is too early to tell which of these narratives is closer to reality, but there is no doubt that the Chinese model is dramatically different from the U.S. model in scale and composition.

Conclusion

The U.S. has long exercised global development leadership through its role as the world’s largest aid donor in absolute terms (by some considerable margin) and through its influence in the multilateral development institutions that it created. In addition to its own leadership role, the U.S. government has also proactively supported U.S. companies, universities, foundations, and humanitarian organizations in their efforts to invest and operate internationally and engage on global development issues.

The new world of development finance, however, revolves around loans, often for infrastructure projects. It engages private businesses. On this front, other countries, in particular China, have leapfrogged the U.S. both in the instruments they use and in the standards they are setting for sustainable finance.

At the same time, the priorities for the global development agenda are no longer being set by large individual donors like the U.S. They have been determined through a multilateral accord of 193 countries that negotiated and agreed on the SDGs as the framework to guide them through 2030. The U.S. has been slow to align its own policies and approaches to this agenda and risks losing credibility and competitiveness by failing to seriously address the domestic components of the agenda.

The agenda for the U.S. is therefore threefold:

• Show through its domestic programs that it is taking the SDGs seriously and that it is prepared to use this experience and its international assistance to help other countries achieve their goals.
• Strengthen its partnerships with the private sector, especially with financial intermediaries, to set standards that more closely align finance and long-term development, and devise options through which large corporations could adopt an SDG focus for their domestic and international operations alike.
• Add blended finance to its toolkit, especially in areas like sustainable infrastructure where affordable long-term debt is a key constraint, and scale this up to establish itself as a leader in this area. Here, the U.S. needs to take a hard-nosed look at how it views developing country creditworthiness. Too cautious an approach leaves gaps unaddressed; too aggressive an approach can lead to debt distress and developmental backsliding. The quality of design and implementation of debt-financed investments are vital to finding the right balance.

      

 

 

By Molli Ferrarello

The preservation of leadership in global development has been a priority for U.S. administrations since World War II, based on the belief that U.S. economic assistance is an instrument for peace, prosperity, and human betterment.

Today’s era is different. For the past two years, President Donald Trump has proposed cuts to foreign assistance, but has been resisted by a bipartisan coalition in Congress. In a world where development dollars are called upon to tackle myriad challenges, questions of how aid is deployed and how it complements other sources of private and public finance in achieving development impact are crucial.

The 15th Brookings Blum Roundtable (BBR) will continue a conversation from August 2017, on challenges to and opportunities for U.S. foreign assistance and global leadership.

      

 

 

By Ryuichi Tomizawa, Noriharu Masugi

The Sustainable Development Goals seek to level the playing field for millions—economically, socially, ethnically, religiously, linguistically, or physically. These goals have put pressure on the need for fundamental and high-quality official statistics. Yet developing country statistical capacities are underfunded and lack capacity to meet demands for data.

For over three decades, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has provided advisory services to developing countries for capacity development in data collation and statistics. Starting with support for Indonesia’s population census in the early 1980s, JICA has gone on to assist Mexico, Sri Lanka, Argentina, Tanzania, Myanmar, Cambodia, Egypt, and Nepal.

Our chapter in “From Summits to Solutions” analyzes the status of statistical capacity development in developing countries and provides a case study of a capacity development project done by JICA in Cambodia. We also identify some gaps in official statistics in developing countries and present some ideas to simplify the work of national statistical agencies.

Use of administrative data, the internet, and Big Data are among those methods that may provide solutions for closing the gaps in official statistics and statistical capacity development. However, it is an enhanced core capacity that will make use of these technical innovations and be a driver for producing results. In other words, it is not merely information technology and Big Data that produce results, but rather it is through a hands-on approach, joint activities, and trial and error that we can accumulate specific achievements and contribute to the SDGs.

      

 

 

By John R. Allen

As an instrument for peace, prosperity, and human advancement, U.S. foreign assistance constitutes one of the most important examples of American compassion. Since the Marshall Plan allowed hard hit citizens and enterprises to return to normalcy after World War II, advancing a new world order in the process, America has embraced its role as a global development leader.

Yet today, aid—and with it, U.S. global leadership—are under threat.

“Invigorating U.S. Leadership in Global Development” was the theme of the August 1-3 Brookings Blum Roundtable, which I was fortunate to attend. Now in its fifteenth year, the event annually explores various facets of international development, poverty reduction, and foreign assistance. While there, I heard from business leaders, heads of prominent nongovernmental organizations, lead budget and aid specialists from the U.S. government, and researchers about practical ways of solving big challenges—from supporting refugees, to strengthening fragile states, to making progress on the widely endorsed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Questions about filling development financing gaps and advancing U.S. leadership through multilateral participation were discussed as well.

One of the threads that ran throughout the three-day roundtable discussion was the distinction between U.S. leadership and American leadership. At a time when there is a retrenchment of global engagement and leadership by segments of the U.S. government, hundreds and thousands of organizations across the country—state and local governments, universities, civil organizations like Rotary and Kiwanis, NGOs, corporations—are actively engaged outside our borders. These groups provide an enduring form of U.S. global leadership on issues from human rights, to relief from natural disasters, to climate change.

I’ve always believed the leading edge of America’s influence is defined through our diplomacy and our foreign assistance. Underlying this is America’s leadership as a generous nation imbued with a humanitarian sense of responsibility. Yet today’s political context means we are rowing against a tide of nativism and populism. Even though grassroots and grass-tops support for international development abounds at the subnational level and among some federal government agencies, our current transactional approach to international relations is eroding America’s global reach. And if we retreat too far, our country’s moral authority will also slip away and be filled eagerly by other forces in the world, not least of all China. In the end, nature and foreign affairs both abhor vacuums.

The role of the SDGs in countering negative megatrends

In a world beset by worrying demographic trends, rapid urbanization, climate change, and a transactional approach to international relations, the universally agreed-upon SDGs remain the critical roadmap for humanitarian and development activities.

Few goals are more important than eliminating poverty, exclusion, and hunger from the world, educating our children, protecting women from violence, or addressing today’s climate emergency. Any movement on these goals will make the world a safer place and progress will be overwhelmingly in the interest of our national security. If the U.S. Government spurns the SDGs, as it now appears to be doing, we will be doing so at our own peril. Indeed, the Trump administration’s intention to withdraw from the Paris Climate Treaty alone was a bad move in that direction.

My military experience taught me that the roots of radicalization are planted far upstream from the moment that someone picks up a weapon. Indeed, the roots of unrest, terrorism, and insurgency are often linked to hunger, poverty, and lack of opportunity—the very phenomena the SDGs are focused on. It is development solutions that address and can ultimately fix these problems, not military interventions.

An unstable security environment is often a direct result of the failure to satisfy human aspirations and yearnings.  Today’s unrest in the Middle East and across North Africa began in part with the rising up of young people who could no longer accept the realities of their human condition.

From a U.S. global leadership perspective, the more we align ourselves with these important and unifying international norms, the better will be the outcome, not just for the United States, but for the world. Homi Kharas’ brief, “U.S. global leadership through an SDG lens,” provides useful background on the topic. In addition, a new co-edited, co-authored Brookings book by Homi and a diverse set of external contributors, “From Summits to Solutions: Innovations in Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals,” explores distinct solutions related to everything from expanding women’s opportunities to preserving the oceans and setting goals in wealthy countries.

The security-development nexus

In all my missions—whether in Bosnia, Iraq, or Afghanistan—I was mindful that certain fragile states cannot be permitted to fail because the strategic cost of inaction would be too great. In such instances, a coordinated approach between our security assistance and foreign assistance is essential.

In 2016 Jim Stavridis, my classmate from Annapolis, and I wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Expanding the U.S. Military’s Smart-Power Toolbox.”  The piece was focused on the need for combatant commanders to have the requisite authority to allocate their resources so as to leverage the full capabilities of military, diplomatic and development tools integrated with their mission. The authority we sought would have included funding for USAID programs to support youth-development and conflict-mitigation in places like Agadez, Niger, where better opportunities could dissuade young people from joining terrorist groups.

On the multilateral front, I recently joined World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim at a public event, where we highlighted the broad need to treat development, security, and humanitarian assistance in a more integrated way. Brookings and the World Bank are committed to working together in this area through research and targeted engagement aimed at bringing together diverse actors working on fragile states.

In terms of explaining the linkages between foreign aid and global security, the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, an NGO/business/retired military network, is doing terrific work. Fanning out to cities around the U.S., they advocate for adequately resourcing our development and diplomacy activities and I have the privilege of sitting on their National Security Advisory Council. I commend the work of Liz Schrayer, USGLC president and CEO, whose roundtable brief “Foreign Assistance in the America First Era” outlines the bipartisan support for the development work in the Trump administration.

Women hold up half the sky

A key takeaway from the 2018 roundtable was how extraordinarily important women are in conflict resolution, and in achieving development objectives. Indeed, peace outcomes from conflict that involve women typically have a much longer or a much greater probability of success than those that only engage men.

Women in some of the toughest places exhibit entrepreneurial instincts that in many cases far outstrip those of men, making them an excellent investment option. I saw this firsthand in Iraq and Afghanistan, where we made microloans available to women all over the country. Invariably those loans were paid back on time or early and the outcomes stimulated economic progress on the ground, which then reduced conflict and violence.

So the whole idea of future military commanders working closely with USAID and State Department and similar organizations, NGOs, and others, to try to find a way to empower women at the civil society level and women in the governments in these countries is well on track, and should be a “doctrinal” approach as we go forward. It is imperative we expand support for programs and projects that empower women in these societies.

Forging ahead

The global development agenda is daunting, but practical reforms and interventions can ensure progress. Making inroads in tackling poverty and other big problems requires working with the private sector, with civil society organizations, and with other diverse players across the security and development communities. If we navigate wisely and hold to a rational, hopeful outlook, we can achieve great things for America and for the world.

For its part, Brookings will continue researching fragility and what it will take to leave no one behind in the toughest places. Scholars are planning additional mini-roundtables on fragility and are completing a research project on multilateral and international organizations. Work on measuring current trends and gaps on the SDGs is ongoing, along with plans for a future book on dealing with the furthest left behind in the race to meet the SDGs.

      

 

 

By Ikuo Takizawa

SDG 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.

The third Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) comprises targets that are challenging for many countries. Target focuses range from maternal and child health and infectious diseases to non-communicable diseases and injuries, with an overarching goal of universal health coverage.

The players associated with each target are also diverse. National governments, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other U.N. agencies, and various organizations work to move the needle on global health. The World Bank and other multilateral development banks play an important role in global health financing, as do private philanthropic organizations and high-income donor countries.

My chapter in “From Summits to Solutions” reviews the global efforts by these players in recent years and identifies areas for which extensive mobilization at the global level is being pursued. I seek to identify a set of criteria by which the activities of existing alliances, partnerships, and other international health regimes can be evaluated for a better global collective action for health under the SDGs.

In the Millennium Development Goal era, global health governance was largely characterized by the proliferation of global health initiatives. In the Sustainable Development Goal era, our vision of global health governance needs to be broadened to focus not only on the individual health initiatives, but also their interactions with each other.  

Meeting the challenges in achieving the 2030 targets will require a renewed effort to resolve coordination problems across global health initiatives so that the international health community can reconcile diverse agendas and constituencies to improve health and well-being for all.

      

 

 

By Fred Dews, Merrell Tuck-Primdahl

Merrell Tuck-Primdahl, communications director for the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings, interviews participants from the 15th annual Brookings Blum Roundtable. This year’s roundtable focused on U.S. leadership in foreign assistance, China’s influence and ambitions, how to support development on the ground, and more.  

Also in this episode, Molly Reynold’s describes what members of the House and Senate will be doing in the upcoming weeks while Congress should be on its annual August recess.

Related content:

Invigorating US leadership in global development

Invigorating US leadership in global development (Event)

The case against a US retreat from international development

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Thanks to audio producer Gaston Reboredo with assistance from Mark Hoelscher, and to producers Brennan Hoban and Chris McKenna. Additional support comes from Jessica Pavone, Eric Abalahin, Camilo Ramirez, and Emily Horne.

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