By Philani Mthembu, Executive Director at Institute for Global Dialogue
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the lack of a regional alternative to access goods and services once global value chains had been disrupted. Such a situation can only be remedied by encouraging the development of more robust regional value chains that feed into existing global value chains, boosting resilience to future pandemics or crises. Regional co-operation and integration are the missing link to ensure greater alignment and coordination between national plans and international development goals.
By André de Mello e Souza, Researcher, Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), Brazil
Global development is increasingly being seen as reliant on the private sector, both for its financing and project implementation1. As Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members attempt to redistribute the burden of sponsoring initiatives abroad, they tend to shift this burden to profit-seeking corporations, while counting the funds provided to trigger investments by such corporations as part of their conceded Official Development Assistance (ODA)2. In so doing, they are also responding to the perceived dearth of resources from multilateral sources, especially the UN. Additionally, by engaging the private sector they enable and incentivise their own corporations to compete with those from China in developing countries where Chinese economic presence is deeply felt.
By Rodrigo Olivares-Caminal, Professor of Banking and Finance Law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London, and Paola Subacchi, Professor of International Economics, Global Policy Institute, Queen Mary University of London
The financial response to the COVID-19 crisis has driven debt building at an unprecedented speed, which has increased the risk of debt distress and the odds of a new debt crisis cycle. Emerging markets and developing economies are most at risk. When the COVID-19 crisis began in February 2020, it demanded extraordinary policy measures to protect lives and provide support to those who had lost their livelihoods. The public debt vulnerabilities for many countries, especially the poorest ones, were already significant at that time, but the subsequent collapse of many economic activities exacerbated the situation. As of 30 April 2021, 29 countries were at high risk of debt distress, and 7 low-income countries had already succumbed to it. Somalia, for example, is currently in debt distress and needs to secure relief to restore debt sustainability.
Emerging markets and developing economies are most at risk because of their exposure to international capital flows and the fact that portions of their debt are issued in hard currencies, namely the US dollar. This leaves them vulnerable to changes in US monetary policy, and so to sudden outflows when risk aversion and international financial volatility are high. Some countries have learned lessons from previous debt crisis cycles – as is evident, for example, in the development of local-currency securities markets which mitigate the risk of foreign-currency borrowing – but such resilience is patchy and far from being systemic.
By Pedro Conceição, Director of the Human Development Report Office and lead author of the Human Development Report
Forest fires in California and Australia. Heatwaves in Europe and India. Snow in Texas. These are only some of the recent extreme weather events that are increasingly ravaging our planet. Climate change is likely playing a crucial role in all of them. Add in COVID-19, which almost certainly sprang from human interaction with wildlife, we have an even clearer warning of the risks of human pressure on the planet. These pressures have had such an impact that many scientists argue that we have entered a new era, the Anthropocene, or the age of humans, in which humans have become a dominant force shaping the planet.
The COVID-19 crisis has put development co-operation to the test. This blog is one of the contributions by leading experts and policymakers to the OECD Development Co-operation Report 2020: Learning from Crises, Building Resilience, which draws early lessons and explores how to build systems that protect people better from global risks .
By Imme Scholz, Deputy Director of the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) and Deputy Chair of the German Council for Sustainable Development[i]
This blog is part of a series on tackling COVID-19 in developing countries. Visit the OECD dedicated page to access the OECD’s data, analysis and recommendations on the health, economic, financial and societal impacts of COVID-19 worldwide.
The world is now in the eighth month of the COVID-19 pandemic. When this was written, the highest daily infection rates were recorded in India, the US and Brazil, while the highest death rates (per 100,000 inhabitants) were registered in Europe and the Americas. Africa so far has not turned into a hotspot of the disease – good news that is attributed to effective public health workers and Africa’s young population. The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare weaknesses and blind spots in societies, economies and policies worldwide. Notably that public services the world over take too long to understand their new responsibilities under changed circumstances and as a result act too slowly, at the expense of the most vulnerable. For example, infection and death rates are high in OECD countries despite good health care systems. And insufficient digital infrastructure and access in public administrations, schools and households, exacerbated by social inequalities, affect access to education in Germany or in Latin American countries alike.
