Collateral damage? The Russia-Ukraine conflict and energy transitions in Least Developed Countries
By Dr. Harry Verhoeven, Senior Research Scholar at the Centre on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University
Discussions about climate are, always, discussions about distribution- of costs, benefits and sacrifices. For years now, the grand bargain required to ward off the existential threat of human-induced global warming has been clear. Rich, developed economies need to swiftly and comprehensively decarbonise their energy and industrial systems in ways that both mitigate the intensity of climatic changes and that enable the planet’s poorest societies to follow a cleaner, more equitable growth trajectory. Doing so would generate time, resources and appropriate technologies for those currently marginalised in the global economy to respond more effectively to climatic upheaval. Understood as such, combating climatic changes should also help address those other mega-problems challenging 21st century civilisation: multidimensional poverty; yawning inequalities between and within countries; and the structural exclusion of hundreds of millions of people from access to public goods to which they are ethically and legally entitled.
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Towards gender-inclusive industrialisation in a post-pandemic world
By Elissa Braunstein, Colorado State University, Elisa Calza and Alejandro Lavopa, United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)[1]
The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world unlike any other crisis in recent history. During 2020, world gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 3.3%, the deepest global recession in 70 years, with an estimated loss of 255 million full-time employment jobs and an additional 97 million people falling into poverty. The effects were especially severe in developing and emerging industrial economies, which suffered an average estimated output loss of 7.7% compared to 3.9% for industrialised economies, according to the UNIDO Industrial Development Report 2022. Within countries, SMEs were more likely to shut down operations than large firms and suffered larger declines in sales and profits. Across workers, women experienced greater labour-market losses than men.
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Time for a UN agreement on carbon pricing
By José Antonio Ocampo, Professor at Columbia University and former UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs and Finance to the G20
Climate change has become an existential threat to humanity. The world has failed to adopt the decisions needed to meet the Paris Agreement targets, restated at COP26 in Glasgow last year, to keep the rise in average global temperature to under 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels and well below 2oC. As the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicates, current national commitments are still insufficient: CO2 emissions need to fall by around 45% by 2030 from 2010 levels and global emissions need to peak before 2025.
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Why intersectional feminism matters for development
By Aviva Stein, Co-founder and Strategic Development Consultant at Catalystas Consulting, an intersectional feminist consulting collective working on international development
The future is female. But it is also climate aware, energy efficient, and well-fed with nutritious and sustainably produced food. It provides equitable access to basic services, education, and economic empowerment – regardless of level of (dis)ability, socioeconomic status, or racial, ethnic, and religious background. While this future may take some time to build, intersectional feminism can play a key role in ensuring we realise the change we envision.
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Doing climate adaptation better
By Saleemul Huq, Director, International Centre for Climate Change and Development, Independent University Bangladesh
I have written about the need to ramp up adaptation in order to avoid the worst impacts of human-induced climate change around the world, as lead author on adaptation for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for over a decade. So the Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC containing that message was nothing new.
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Support to Ukrainian refugees and official development assistance
By Haje Schütte, Senior Counsellor and Head, Financing for Sustainable Development Division, Development Co-operation Directorate, OECD
In the first week of the Ukraine war, roughly 6,000 people crossed the border into neighbouring countries every hour. This sort of displacement is unprecedented in modern day Europe. At the time of writing, two thirds of Ukraine’s refugees, mostly women and children, are hosted by Poland, Hungary and the Slovak Republic.
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The IMF and the capital account: Another step forward but still out of step
By Kevin P. Gallagher, Professor and Director of the Global Development Policy Centre at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, and Co-Chair of the ‘Think 20’ Task Force on International Finance to the G20 and José Antonio Ocampo, Professor at Columbia University and former UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs and Finance to the G20
Last week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) took another step forward in recognising that regulating international capital flows is important to maintain financial stability. However, the IMF’s new policy change is still not fully in step with the policies needed to manage the capital account volatility that emerging and developing countries face.
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Covid-19 vaccines and official development assistance
By Haje Schütte, Senior Counsellor and Head, Financing for Sustainable Development Division, Development Co-operation Directorate, OECD
When scientists announced the discovery of a Covid-19 vaccine, the world sighed with relief. But soon after, many people around the globe discovered that others would get access to jabs faster than them. The sad term ‘vaccine inequality’ was coined. Only 6% of people are fully vaccinated in low-income countries today. In a bid to fill the gaps and curb the pandemic, there were calls for high-income countries to share and donate vaccine doses to developing countries, in particular through the COVAX Facility – the multilateral mechanism for providing developing countries with vaccines.
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New approaches to development
By Kerem Alkin, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Turkey to the OECD
2022 will be a year of new approaches to development, in particular new financing models and revitalising development motivation. The main reason why there is a lack of motivation for development is the lack of belief or trust in the existing economic infrastructure in many developing countries of the world. That is why building self-confidence is indispensable to accelerate development, starting with the least developed economies.
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What the Russia-Ukraine war means for Bangladesh’s economy
By Fahmida Khatun, Executive Director at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD)[1]
Since the war between Russia and Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, the global economy has entered a new terrain of uncertainty. The war-induced challenges have surfaced on various fronts. With global economic integration, a crisis of such nature, which involves a country like Russia, is bound to impact other economies.[2]
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