Kind Readers to Again Advise: What Should Be My Global Development Wish List for 2015?

In January of 2014, I set out my development policy wish list, which was made far smarter by your contributions (click here to see that list, and if you want, go back further to the lists ­for 2009 and for 2011). Some of my 2014 wishes have been at least partly realized; there has been modest progress on the tax evasion issue with modest potential to help developing countries (and see #13 in the G20 Brisbane communique.)

But most of my 2014 wishes are still just that: wishes. So my 2015 list will include some repeats. I still wish fervently for a big push – how about from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? – to reduce smoking everywhere. And I still hold out some hope that the US Congress will ease my embarrassment as a US citizen and approve the increase in quotas (and financial resources) of the IMF – if only as a way to help Ukraine. And shall I give up on my longstanding wish that the advanced economies and big emerging markets would all commit to duty-free, quota-free access to their markets for the least developed countries (included in the much-neglected Millennium Development Goal #8, now relegated to target #12 under goal #17) before the end of 2015?

But I want to hear from you: What to drop and what to add to my 2014 development policy wish list for 2015? Let me know in the comments section below.

As you consider what to suggest for additions to this year’s list, keep in mind international events in 2015 whose proponents and participants will be looking for actionable announcements: the International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa in July; the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals at the UN in September; and the climate summit in Paris in December. Who in the US development community can forget that it was at a UN Development summit in Monterrey, Mexico in 2002 that President George Bush announced the creation by the United States of the Millennium Challenge Account?

I'm hoping this crowd-sourcing of policy proposals indicates not just what would be good but also what might garner support in the worldwide community in the next year. All ideas incorporated in my list will be duly acknowledged and attributed!