CGD’s Climate Work Wins Recognition

We’re number 7! The International Center for Climate Governance (ICCG) has released its third annual ranking of climate think tanks, and CGD placed seventh out of 244 tanks ranked worldwide for 2014.  

Pretty good for an organization that doesn’t describe itself as a climate think tank. But these days, development and climate are inextricably linked. The world’s poorest people are hurt most by climate change, and extreme storms can set back development efforts by decades.  That’s why CGD’s mission to improve the practices of rich nations that impact the world’s poor people involves climate change. We are proud to be recognized for our efforts.

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As a “think-and-do tank” we strive to turn research into practice. Much of our work involves the three activities on which the ICCG ranking was based: research, dissemination, and policy involvement.  In 2014 CGD researchers wrote or commissioned 19 publications on climate, many as part of the Climate and Forest Paper Series for Frances Seymour’s and my forthcoming book Why Forests? Why Now?. We published 46 blog posts. And we were a presence at events from the Secretary General’s climate summit in New York to the UN climate convention in Lima. 

For a sample of work by CGD researchers on climate and development in 2014, see:

• Nancy Birdsall, Bill Savedoff, and Frances Seymour on the Brazil-Norway Amazon Fund
• Michele de Nevers on the Green Climate Fund
• Jens Engelmann and me on forests’ under-recognized contributions to climate mitigation
• Kalifi Ferretti-Gallon and me on how to stop deforestation
• Alice Lepissier and Owen Barder on carbon pricing
• Kim Elliott on congressional subsidies for biodiesel
• Kevin Ummel on American households’ climate footprint
• Todd Moss and Madeleine Gleave on replacing generators with natural gas plants
• Lawrence McDonald and Jing Cao on the future of US-China climate cooperation. 

We also built on the foundation laid by fellow-emeritus David Wheeler who has taken his talents and the Forest Monitoring for Action monitoring tool to World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch.

CGD is no stranger to the ranking game. We may be best known for the Commitment to Development Index (CDI), in which we rank the rich countries on aid, trade, finance, migration, environment, security, and technology, and our assessment with the Brookings Institution of the Quality of Official Development Assistance (QuODA). But we also produce a ranking of international development think tanks (by our calculations we placed 2^nd in 2013 and 4^th in 2014).

2015 is an even bigger year for climate and development, with important conferences in Addis Ababa on financing for development, New York on the Sustainable Development Goals, and Paris on an international climate agreement. We’ll keep working to convince rich countries to improve their climate practices, including results-based payments for tropical forest conservation.  We hope you’ll continue to tune in to CGD.