After paralysis and despair in the face of infinite shades of off-white paint a couple of weeks ago, I have graduated to a new form of suffering: choosing tiles. Tiles are even more fiendish, because the choice is multiplicative: you can choose several colours, finishes, crackles, glazes and glosses...

On November 13th, 2022, the creation of a new Pandemic Fund, hosted by the World Bank, was announced. Its mandate is ambitious: to successfully prevent, prepare and respond to emerging pathogens. This will require true collective action, and implementation of decisive and ambitious policies in as ma...

Last year, I went zip lining. It invigorated my sense of how to approach the elusive pursuit of empowerment. Imagine climbing six stories to the top of a platform 65 feet up in the air, connecting yourself to a cable, and then jumping off to go zipping through tree tops at a speed of 35 miles an hou...

The World Bank’s draft Roadmap for reform is the institution’s initial attempt to respond to the challenge laid down by major shareholders, led by the US, to respond forcefully to the crisis of climate change and to reinvent itself. In our view, the draft doesn’t respond sufficiently to that policy ...

In December 2022, the international development community gathered in Geneva (and online) for the third High-Level Meeting (HLM) of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC). In recent years, declining political interest and stalled progress towards effectiveness targets h...

A central objective of climate policy is the reduction of carbon emissions, either by promoting renewable energies and increasing energy efficiency across sectors, or by imposing restrictions on activities contributing to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The financial sector is expected to play a maj...

You’ll have to forgive me if the introduction to the links seems a bit distracted: England are in the final stages of an absolute thriller against South Africa in a one-day international, with Jofra Archer easing back into international cricket by being absolutely carted for 81 runs in his ten overs...