Opinions

Recent Commentary

World Bank Power Projects: Crossroads on Renewable Energy (Slide Show Commentary)

David Wheeler offers commentary on slides that illustrate his forthcoming paper with Kevin Ummel on a dynamic strategy for developing solar thermal power as a cost-competitive alternative to coal-fired power. They have presented versions of these slides at a number of conferences and policy workshops during the past two months. This is a summary of the forthcoming paper and its conclusions.

Foreign Aid: Diagnosis without Direction

In a recent review of William Easterly's The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, published in the SAIS Review, CGD president Nancy Birdsall applauds Easterly's diagnosis of the problem with foreign aid: donors favor big, comprehensive, visible projects rather than trying to solve narrow, immediate problems. Easterly proposes a two-fold solution: remodel the entire system to raise accountability and refocus aid toward smaller, specialized programs. Birdsall argues against reinventing the entire aid system, in place of reforming aspects of it to resemble Easterly's model.

Global Fund Grant Programs: An Analysis of Evaluation

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has quickly become one of the world's largest funders of health programs. In this article, originally published in The Lancet, Steve Radelet and Bilal Siddi analyze 140 program grants evaluated by the Global Fund and the association between the programs' evaluation scores and various characteristics of the grants themselves. Among their findings: AIDS and TB programs, and programs implemented by civil society/private sector recipients, tend to have higher scores.

The New Global Slave Trade [Foreign Affairs]

The New Global Slave Trade, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2006. This article is reprinted by permission of FOREIGN AFFAIRS (www.foreignaffairs.org), Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations.

What to Read: Inequality and Development in a Globalizing World (Syllabus)

This syllabus prepared by CGD President Nancy Birdsall for a course she taught in Bologna, Italy, for students of Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) brings together key readings on inequality and development in a globalizing world. The syllabus also provides links to websites that contain data on inequality and globalization and further readings on each topic.

Following the Money in Global Health

This article originally appeared in Global HealthLink

"Resource tracking" is a hot new topic in global health circles. Far from being of interest only to accountants and statisticians, data on the flow of money – how much, from whom and for what – is the subject of intense debates within the donor community, the policy community in developing countries and civil society "watchdog" groups.

Controversy over World Bank trade & poverty estimates

Three years ago the World Bank said that freeing international trade of all barriers and subsidies would lift 320 million people above the $2 a day poverty line by 2015. But new World Bank projections emphasizing $1 a day poverty and based on new data and methods put the number at just 32 million people. CGD/IIE Senior Fellow William R. Cline, author of Trade Policy and Global Poverty, has been examining the Bank's new calculations and argues that the first estimate was closer to the truth.

A Hong Kong Declaration

Trade ministers in Hong Kong just barely managed to meet the low expectations they set for themselves, according to Kimberly Elliott, a CGD/IIE joint fellow. "This means that the negotiations still have a chance to reach a meaningful agreement in 2006, but the pace and the willingness to make politically difficult concessions will have to increase substantially," she said.

Beyond the Consensus of Washington: New Social Contract in Latin America

This commentary is a summary of a presentation by Nancy Birdsall delivered in Lima Peru on November 17, 2005 for the Group for the Analysis of Development

France must see immigrants' future

This op-ed by Audrey Singer and Gregory Michaelidis was Originally published November 20, 2005 in the Baltimore Sun.

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Recent Blog Posts

Global Development: Views from the Center

• Another Banner Year for IFC -- NOW Is The Time for A Big Push into Renewable Energy
• Turning the Beat Around on Foreign Assistance Reform: Two Events Shift Debate From Why to How
• President Sarkozy's Compassion for the Poor and Hungry
• India Sees (Some Of) the Light on Solar Thermal Potential
• On Zimbabwe: How Do the Worst Leaders Affect Development?

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Global Health Policy

• HIV/AIDS Funding and Health Systems: How do AIDS Donors Interact With National Health Systems?
• We Need a Metaphor for Health Systems. What About the Human Body?
• Shining a Light on What Works: Aravind Eye Care System Wins Gates Award
• "AIDS Spending Harms Health Systems" -- Passionately Disputed but Hardly Refuted
• Good Drugs are Hard to Come By

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MCA Monitor Blog

• Adding Value with AGRA
• The Final Cut: Smart Advocacy Reduces MCC Rescission to $58 Million
• Rescinding Rescission
• Administration Doesn't Object in SAP to MCA Cuts
• Sacrificing the MCA to be Good Just Isn't Smart

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Speeches

Statement Before The U.S. House Of Representatives Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic and International Policy, Trade, and Technology: Hearing on Examining the Administration's Proposal to Establish a Multilateral Clean Technology Fund

Thank you Chairman Gutierrez, Congressman Paul and distinguished members of the subcommittee for inviting me to participate in today’s hearing.

I would like to begin with a brief tale of two possible clean technology funds, whose different consequences will have enormous implications for our children and grandchildren. Imagine, if you will, that it is now 2015, seven years after the creation of a multilateral fund for clean technology. In Scenario 1, the World Bank’s Clean Technology Fund (CTF) has provided developing countries with billions of dollars to make coal-fired power plants and other energy projects marginally more efficient but has done little to stem the alarming rise in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The catastrophic nature of rapid climate change, including droughts, floods, fires, falling agricultural productivity, and a swelling tide of climate refugees, is increasingly evident and universally understood. But precious time has been lost. We are on course for a planetary disaster.

Statement Before The U.S. House Of Representatives Committee On Financial Services: Hearing on Contributing Factors and International Responses to the Global Food Crisis

Statement Before The U.S. House Of Representatives Committee On Financial Services: Hearing on Contributing Factors and International Responses to the Global Food Crisis. By Arvind Subramanian.

Building on International Debt Relief Initiatives: Testimony for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Download the full testimony (PDF, 59 KB)
Watch the full testimony (Nancy Birdsall starts at 01:14:00)

From Dr. Birdsall's testimony:

As many of you know, the Center for Global Development was founded in 2001 as an independent, non-partisan think tank dedicated to improving the policies of the rich countries as they relate to the world's poor countries and poorest people. What you may not know is that it was a film growing out of the Jubilee debt movement, which portrayed the burden of debt in the world's poorest countries, that inspired my co-founder and the Center's principal benefactor, Edward W. Scott, Jr. that the rich world could do better for the poor -- including through better U.S. debt and aid policy. One result is that U.S. debt policy has been a core issue for CGD since its inception.

I would like to make four points.

First: Debt relief is a highly efficient form of aid and has clearly helped foster social progress and economic growth in low-income countries

Second: Debt relief itself is not a panacea

Third: The Jubilee Act under consideration, despite its merits, raises several concerns

Fourth: Consider a better Jubilee bill to help poor countries minimize and better manage debt

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