Participants of the Ultra-Poor Graduation program utilize technology to ensure financial literacy best practices in Rangpur, Bangladesh (BRAC 2018)

Opinion: The World Bank’s Evolution Is a Chance to Accelerate the End of Extreme Poverty


By Shameran Abed, Executive Director, BRAC International and Joanne Carter, Executive Director, RESULTS/RESULTS Educational Fund


The World Bank is evolving, but can it widen its mandate without losing focus on ending extreme poverty?

Cascading crises that include COVID-19, the Ukraine war, rising inflation, and climate extremes are making the fight against poverty ever more complex. Presented with this shifting landscape, we must support the World Bank’s efforts to evolve to better support governments in driving sustainable development.

However, in a world where lack of prioritisation over recent years has already led to a slowing of poverty reduction, the Bank must ensure its evolutions do not result in losing further momentum towards this goal.

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SDG summit-development matters

Une ambition renouvelée pour la coopération pour le développement à l’OCDE


Par María del Pilar Garrido Gonzalo, Directrice de la coopération pour le développement à l’OCDE


Read this blog in English


Le récent sommet de Paris pour un Nouveau Pacte Financier Mondial a tourné une page de la coopération pour le développement écrite en 1944 à Bretton Woods. Créés alors, la Banque internationale pour la reconstruction et le développement (BIRD) et le Fonds monétaire international (FMI) avaient un champ d’action limité pour un monde qui comptait moins d’une centaine de pays indépendants. Les priorités étaient la reconstruction de l’Europe et l’équilibre des balances de paiements, comme en témoigne le prêt pionnier de la BIRD à la France. Depuis, le monde a considérablement évolué, avec plus de 150 pays aspirant au statut de pays à revenu élevé, plus de 650 millions de personnes en situation d’extrême pauvreté, et des défis urgents liés au changement climatique et à la perte de biodiversité.

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SDG summit-development matters

A renewed ambition for development co-operation at the OECD


By María del Pilar Garrido Gonzalo, Director, Development Co-operation directorate, OECD


The recent Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact turned a page of the development co-operation history that was written in Bretton Woods in 1944. Back then, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were founded with a limited scope, catering to a world of fewer than a hundred independent countries. The focus was on Europe’s reconstruction and balance of payments, illustrated by France’s pioneering IBRD loan. However, the landscape has drastically changed, with over 150 countries striving for high-income status, more than 650 million people in extreme poverty, and urgent challenges stemming from climate change and biodiversity loss.

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The SDGs require a stronger role for culture in development


By Gijs de Vries, Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE); former member of the Dutch Government and former board member of the European Cultural Foundation


In 2015, world leaders pledged to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. They also promised to eradicate poverty and hunger, to secure peace and prosperity, to protect the planet, and to leave no-one behind. Today, both the Paris agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals are off-track and their time is running out. Our planet is at risk and public trust in governments is fraying. Governments must aim higher, with greater ambition, courage, and imagination. Fresh thinking is needed, along with new, innovative public-private partnerships. It is time for these partnerships to be extended to the cultural and creative sectors.

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In with the old and with the new: Meeting mountain farmers’ technological needs


By Filippo Barbera, Professor of Economic Sociology at University of Turin and member of Forum on Inequality and Diversity


In 53 countries of the world, mountainous areas cover more than 50% of national surface, in another 46, they cover between 25% and 50%. And in many other countries they play key roles, like serving as water reserves. In agriculture, modernisation has whittled away at the scale of assets held by individual farmers or local communities, such as land, labour and local knowledge. The voices of marginal mountain farmers have not been able to find space in this process. However, by combining traditional methods with modern tools and techniques, technology that is place-based and socially embedded can help meet mountain farmers’ needs and make governance more inclusive of mountain areas.

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A new social contract for a job-rich recovery

By Paola Simonetti, Deputy Director, Economic and Social Policy Department, ITUC

“People are no longer coming to the kiosk to buy tea since the pandemic outbreak started. I am the breadwinner of a family of nine. On many days I don’t earn a single shilling and return home empty handed”. This is the story of Jamila, a tea kiosk holder in Mogadishu, Somalia. Her story is also the story of around 2 billion informal workers worldwide who have been left to cope with the crisis on their own.

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Why local? Why now? Strengthening intermediary cities to achieve the SDGs

By Shipra Narang Suri, Ph.D. Chief, Urban Practices Branch, Global Solutions Division, UN-Habitat and Federico Bonaglia, Deputy Director, OECD Development Centre

Cities and local authorities around the world have played a key role in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, applying prevention and containment measures, providing swift humanitarian response, as well as taking the first steps towards post-pandemic recovery. They implemented nation-wide measures, but also experimented with bottom-up recovery strategies. Local authorities are an indispensable “ring” in the governance chain necessary to prevent and respond to pandemics and advance a One Health Approach.

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Public development banks: gateways to transformative SDG financing

By Maria Alejandra Riaño, Research Fellow, Governance Programme, Institut du Développement Durable et des Relations Internationales IDDRI

Public development banks around the world can play a vital role in minimising economic decline, supporting recovery and financing structural transformation. To fulfil this role, they need to fully capture the interconnected and transversal nature of the 2030 Agenda and align their practices, operations and investments accordingly. It is not just a matter of marginally adjusting strategies and processes – public development banks need to deeply reshape behaviours and investment practices.

Scaling up public development banks’ alignment with the 2030 Agenda

Public development banks have certain advantages that position them at the forefront of the vast network of actors responding to the socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 crisis and seeking to chart a course towards a transformative recovery. Public development banks have become an essential and complementary voice for traditional co-operation and commercial investors due to their detailed knowledge of the specific context in each region or country, and unmatched flexibility in the design of concessional loan programmes.

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Achieving inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and the SDGs in the post-COVID-19 world

By Professor Arkebe Oqubay, Senior Minister and Special Adviser to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia


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 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

In the context of international development, the year 2015 marked the transition from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the much broader 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the much more ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It signalled an emerging paradigm shift in the international development agenda, a collectively agreed set of universal goals for an inclusive and sustainable global development process.

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Implementing the SDGs: why are some civil society organisations being left behind?

By Vanessa de Oliveira, Task Team on CSO Development Effectiveness and Enabling Environment

Civil society organisations (CSOs) are widely recognised as important partners in the implementation and monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But to what extent is civil society really engaged and involved in SDG processes or consultations at the country level?

A new Task Team study undertaken by the International Institute of Social Studies points to a lack of diversity in the types of civil society organisations engaged in these processes. Organisations that are part of the aid system – typically urban, often international or based in donor countries – are at a clear advantage.Similarly, another study (the 2018 Monitoring Round of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation) found opportunities for civil society organisations to be irregular, unpredictable and lacking the involvement of a diverse set of actors. The latest OECD study on Development Assistance Committee members and civil society also echoes these conclusions: dialogues between donors and CSOs are more likely to take place at the donors’ headquarters, and lack general good practice standards like setting a joint agenda.

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