Category: Event
What Do Middle Income Countries Want from the Multilateral Development Banks? Sri Mulyani Indrawati and Jin Liqun in Conversation with Masood Ahmed
FEATURING
MODERATOR
This event will be hosted in-person at CGD’s DC office: 2055 L St NW, 5th floor, Washington, DC 20036
What do middle income countries (MICs) want from the multilateral development banks (MDBs)? Large developing countries like Indonesia have longstanding relationships with the MDBs and have been among their most important clients. But these relationships are now receiving renewed attention as the climate crisis has focused global attention on the need to pursue green growth strategies in large developing economies. As these countries seek to mitigate their climate emissions without harming their prospects, MDBs have emerged as their leading partners, often at the behest of wealthy country shareholders.
But how are governments in developing countries rethinking their own relationships with the MDBs? How should the MDBs adapt to their demands, not just to support climate change mitigation but their development strategies more broadly?
In this session, we will hear from two leading voices on these critical questions. Minister Indrawati and President Jin know both sides of the MDB-MIC relationship better than most, and both are now on the front lines of the critical effort to unlock financing for climate change mitigation. The government of Indonesia and the AIIB are each on the vanguard of a client-driven approach to MDB engagement, and in turn, both are demonstrating leadership on the climate finance agenda. CGD president Masood Ahmed will engage Minister Indrawati and President Jin in a conversation about the critical relationship between MDBs and middle-income countries, drawing on the important lessons learned by a leading developing country government and an innovative MDB.
Refreshments will be provided. For a full list of CGD Spring Meetings events, click here.
Investing for a Sustainable Future in an Age of Disorder and Uncertainty: A Conversation with the European Investment Bank (EIB)
FEATURING
MODERATORS
This event will be hosted in-person at CGD’s DC office: 2055 L St NW, 5th floor, Washington, DC 20036
As one of the world’s main financers of climate action, the European Investment Bank (EIB) has placed sustainability at the heart of its activities. In 2019, in a landmark decision, the EIB announced an end to lending for unabated fossil fuel energy projects. Last year the EIB invested more than 12 billion dollars outside of the EU, through its new development arm EIB Global, in projects intended to create stability, promoting sustainable growth, and fighting climate change. However, despite the grim warnings from the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), a host of factors from the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, inflationary pressures, food and energy crises, and debt concerns are complicating decarbonization efforts.
In this conversation in the margins of the World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings, CGD President Masood Ahmed, Mikaela Gavas, CGD Europe Managing Director and Senior Policy Fellow, EIB President Werner Hoyer, and EIB Global’s head of lending for Africa, Caribbean, Pacific, Asia and Latin America, Maria Shaw-Barragan, will discuss how the EIB and other multilateral development banks can maintain the momentum in the face of the climate emergency while managing the ‘polycrisis’, and staying focused on development and the pressing issue of MDB reform.
Refreshments will be provided. For a full list of CGD Spring Meetings events, click here.
Beyond the Dollars: Ensuring World Bank Evolution Means Evidence and Impact Revolution, Too
FEATURING
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
- Bård Vegar Solhjell, Director General, Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad)
PANELISTS
- Bård Vegar Solhjell, Director General, Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad)
- Koldo Echebarria, former Director General, Esade Business and Law School; former manager, Inter-American Development Bank
- Dean Karlan, Chief Economist, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
- Arianna Legovini, Director of the Development Impact Evaluation (DIME), World Bank
- Marie-Ange Saraka-Yao, Managing Director of Resource Mobilisation, Private Sector Partnerships & Innovative Finance, Gavi
MODERATOR
- Amanda Glassman, Executive Vice President of CGD, CEO of CGD Europe, and Senior Fellow
This event will be hosted in-person at CGD’s DC office: 2055 L St NW, 5th floor, Washington, DC 20036
The World Bank’s evolution is a large part of the international response to global challenges like climate change and pandemic risks, with significant attention on amounts and sources of money. But less attention is paid to an inconvenient truth: few policymakers and experts know what works to make measurable progress against global challenges. Few programs are rigorously evaluated, and, particularly in the climate space, results are often so poorly defined and measured that policies and programs fail to achieve their lofty goals.
Spending resources on the most effective programs and policies will be key to meeting a newly revamped mission. The potential rate of return is immense: use of evidence could save hundreds of millions in mistargeted or ineffective spending—and help reduce trade-offs with funding for poverty reduction and development more generally.
This high-level panel will explore ways to make genuine progress on development and global challenges, expanding beyond a narrow focus on mobilizing financing to examine how to enhance the impact of public and aid resources. Speakers will discuss how policymakers can use evidence and evaluation to ensure that resources are spent more effectively and to inform investment—and disinvestment—decisions. The panel discussion will draw from CGD’s Working Group on New Evidence Tools for Policy Impact and related CGD analysis.
Refreshments will be provided. For a full list of CGD Spring Meetings events, click here.
The Other Global Challenge: Pandemic Risks and the World Bank Roadmap
OPENING REMARKS
- Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Senior Minister, Singapore and Co-Chair of the G20 High Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response [recorded]
FEATURING
- President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Former President of Liberia and Co-Chair of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response
- Eric Meyer, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Africa and the Middle East, U.S. Department of the Treasury
- Carolyn Reynolds, Co-Founder, Pandemic Action Network
MODERATOR
- Amanda Glassman, Executive Vice President and Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development
This event will be hosted in-person at CGD’s DC office: 2055 L St NW, 5th floor, Washington, DC 20036
Pandemic potential outbreaks are increasing in intensity and frequency in the coming decades, and the next big one could emerge at any time.
At the World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings in 2022, shareholders called on the Bank to develop a plan to respond to such global challenges. A December roadmap was issued, outlining an approach to evolving the mission, operations and resources of the World Bank to better address climate change but also pandemic preparedness and response. And this spring, an update on World Bank evolution is included on the agenda of the Bank’s Development Committee with more concrete ideas on enhancing scale, incorporating global challenges within country programming, providing greater concessionality or adjustment to allocation mechanisms related to global challenges, and optimizing for impact.
Also last year, the Pandemic Fund was launched, which has just issued its first call for proposals. G20 leaders called for the creation of the fund, with a proposed capitalization need of $10.5 billion annually to respond to the increasing threat of pandemics. However, initial contributions have fallen short of the mark, at just $1.6 billion to date, with no ambitious resource mobilization plan yet.
As new leadership is elected and the evolution roadmap advances at the World Bank, this panel aims to discuss ways that the World Bank and its shareholder countries can tackle pandemic risk as a global challenge. What scale is needed at the Bank itself and at the Pandemic Fund? Within the Bank roadmap, what kinds of operational arrangements and incentives could work to address and optimize impact for not only pandemic preparedness but also response? What role can and do different Bank instruments play?
Join the Center for Global Development and the Pandemic Action Network for a conversation on how the World Bank’s evolution can respond to the ever-present global challenge of pandemic and epidemic risk.
For a full list of CGD Spring Meetings events, click here.