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The World Bank Should Harness Evidence to Deliver Greater Impact
June 5, 2023Introduction At a recent CGD event, new World Bank president Ajay Banga called for the institution to deepen its role as a knowledge bank. In his words, “we won’t win the fight ahead of us without taking some risks. The trick is: don’t make the same mistake twice.” We were pleased to hear this commitment to knowledge generation and use [...]
Testimony on International Financial Institutions in an Era of Great Power Competition
May 25, 2023On May 25, 2023, CGD Distinguished Non-Resident Fellow Daouda Sembene appeared before the Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee at a hearing titled “International Financial Institutions in an Era of Great Power Competition.”
A Larger World Bank Group for a More Integrated Sustainable Development Agenda: Constraints and the Way Out
May 23, 2023Background Memo: Prepared for Council of Councils Annual Conference, May 7–9, 2023, Council on Foreign Relations, New York, NY The 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development called on multilateral development banks (MDBs) to undergo a paradigm shift to play a critical role in mobilizing the private sector for global development. In this context, the World Bank achieved a historic capital [...]
Now Is the Time to Recycle SDRs through the African Development Bank
May 22, 2023This week, the African Development Bank (AfDB) will hold its annual meeting in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. This is the right moment for its shareholders and other donors to commit to allocating some of their excess Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to the hybrid capital fund that the AfDB has proposed to create with SDRs. The G20’s promise to recycle $100 [...]
Recommendations for US treasury and MDBs in developing evolution roadmaps: From fragility to resilience
May 16, 2023The U.S. Department of the Treasury has called on the World Bank to evolve in response to a confluence of global crises that are upending development progress and threatening people and planet. Treasury will soon extend this evolution mandate to other multilateral development banks (MDBs) as part of a campaign that, if successful, would not only reshape global development finance [...]
The time is now: what the World Bank’s (R)evolution Roadmap should look like
May 16, 2023Over the past few months, World Bank management and shareholders have outlined the next iteration of the Bank’s new long-term strategy – the Evolution Roadmap – which was released ahead of this year’s World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings. The Roadmap sets out a newly integrated vision and mission, recognising that the twin goals of poverty eradication and shared prosperity can only be achieved [...]
IF-CAP Recap: The Asian Development Bank’s Big Climate Finance Bet
May 11, 2023At its annual meetings last week in South Korea, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) launched a new large-scale climate finance mechanism, the Innovative Finance Facility for Climate in Asia and the Pacific (IF-CAP). IF-CAP is a donor-backed guarantee facility, where public, private, and philanthropic financing partners take risk off the ADB’s balance sheet by guaranteeing to backstop repayments for ADB mitigation and [...]
Reinventing Multilateral Development Banks
May 4, 2023Countries all over the world are turning to the multilateral development banks (MDBs) as they contend with ever more urgent, even existential, challenges. Progress in reducing poverty has stalled and in some countries reversed. Globally, more than 800 million people are now food insecure. The growing costs of climate change are all around us. Putting off development and climate-related investments [...]
ADB Announces IF-CAP, New Program to Accelerate Billions in Climate Change Financing
May 2, 2023INCHEON, REPUBLIC OF KOREA (2 May 2023) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) today announced the Innovative Finance Facility for Climate in Asia and the Pacific (IF-CAP), a landmark program which could significantly ramp up support for the region in the battle against climate change. The announcement was made by ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa on the opening day of ADB’s [...]
Evolution of the World Bank Group – A Report to Governors
April 12, 2023Spring 2023 Development Policy Committee Report to Governors The World Bank Group (WBG) must evolve in response to the unprecedented confluence ofglobal crises that has upended development progress and threatens people and the planet. TheWBG Governors have called for intensified action, building on the historic WBG global crisis responsesince the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The urgency of action continues [...]
What the World Bank’s Country Climate and Development Reports Tell Us About the Debt-Climate Nexus in Low-income Countries
April 11, 2023The pandemic sent governments worldwide into emergency mode, mobilizing resources against immediate disaster. While the entire world has contended with inflation and economic uncertainty since then, low-income countries (LICs) — defined as those eligible for interest-free loans from the IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust — have had to do so while continuing to struggle against extreme poverty and operating [...]
Bigger, but also better: why MDB reform must go further
April 6, 2023Next week’s Spring Meetings will be dominated by reactions to the World Bank’s updated reform roadmap. The proposed reforms are intended to set out how the World Bank can play a greater role in addressing shared global challenges alongside its mission to eradicate poverty and promote shared prosperity. A proposed $50 billion increase in lending over the next decade clearly falls [...]
From Bretton Woods to Bridgetown? Scaling up the World Bank
March 10, 2023As the global “polycrisis” continues apace – deepening poverty, hunger and misery in its wake – efforts to scale up global development finance in response have, sadly but unsurprisingly, taken a much slower course. One of the more ambitious blueprints, put forward by Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley in mid-2022 – dubbed the “Bridgetown Initiative” – encompasses changes including: restructuring the sovereign [...]
World Bank Group Statement on Evolution Roadmap
January 13, 2023WASHINGTON, JANUARY 13, 2023 — The World Bank Group today released the following statement: “On January 11, the World Bank Group’s Boards of Executive Directors discussed with Management an Evolution Roadmap for the Bank Group to better address the scale of development challenges such as poverty, shared prosperity, inequality, and cross-border challenges including climate change, pandemics, and fragility, conflict and violence, [...]
Multilateral development banks need a bolder vision and urgent reform to tackle the climate crisis
November 12, 2022At COP27 Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, has become a rallying point for those working towards reform of the international finance system, which many believe is no longer fit for purpose in a climate-changed world. The Bridgetown Agenda identifies actions to provide relief to debt-distressed countries and unlock investment for climate action. Her inspiring speeches and the coalition emerging behind her call [...]
Rightsizing the MDB System in the Polycrisis Era
November 8, 2022For both rich and poor countries, the climate crisis is no longer looming. It is all around them. Yet, as thousands gather in Sharm el-Sheikh for COP27, scientists have just confirmed that we are nowhere near where we need to be on greenhouse gas emissions reductions. We can expect a raft of finance promises to emerge from the meetings, many [...]
African Development Bank, United Kingdom and London Market Insurers enter new risk transfer partnership for climate action
October 20, 2022The African Development Bank, the government of the United Kingdom and three globally recognized insurance companies have closed on a new and innovative risk sharing transaction known as the Room to Run Sovereign. The Room to Run Sovereign transaction was structured with the intention of scaling up the African Development Bank Group’s commitments to climate finance by up to [...]
Operationalize the alignment of multilateral development banks with the 2030 Agenda
October 1, 2022This study analyzes five major multilateral development banks (MDBs) and their efforts to enhance their development impact and meet the needs of partner countries around the world in alignment with the 2030 Agenda. To support ongoing discussions on the need to rethink the role of MDBs, the Study aims to provide MDB shareholders, their staff and development and finance experts with [...]
Assessing the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
August 17, 2022The establishment of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in 2016 – and the decision by Western donors, with the notable exceptions of the US and Japan, to join it – seems somewhat remarkable from today’s vantage point. This is because it represents one of the few recent examples of a response to Beijing’s rise that has emphasised collaboration [...]
ADB Partners With Global Insurers to Mobilize $1 Billion in Lending Capacity to Financial Institutions
August 6, 2022MANILA, PHILIPPINES (18 August 2022) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has signed an agreement with five leading global insurers which will mobilize up to $1 billion of cofinancing capacity to support lending to financial institutions in Asia and the Pacific. The Master Framework Program for Financial Institutions will allow ADB to increase its lending to both commercial banks and non-bank [...]
Lend or suspend? Maximising the impact of multilateral bank financing in the Covid-19 crisis
July 21, 2020The Covid-19 pandemic has triggered a collapse in global economic activity that will have lasting economic and social impacts across the world. Recent World Bank estimates suggest that there could be more than 100 million additional people earning less than $1.90 per day as a result of the crisis. Yet, governments in lower income countries have been constrained in mounting [...]