Last week’s Senate Appropriations Committee markup revealed a vast gulf dividing the Capitol with respect to development and diplomacy funding for the coming fiscal year. The two chambers’ State and Foreign Operations spending bill toplines are more than $9 billion apart, with the House coming in at...

At the G20 Finance Ministerial in India on July 17th, World Bank President Ajay Banga announced a new portfolio guarantee program with impressive leverage—$5 billion of donor guarantees that could generate $30 billion in lending over 10 years. This announcement was part of a package of new financial...

Stephanie von Friedeburg of Citi and formerly the International Finance Corporation joins CGD’s Karen Mathiasen and Clemence Landers for a conversation on how to balance risk and impact in investment, why blended finance needs a rethink, and what mechanisms offer the most promising solutions to the ...

The effects of anthropogenic climate change are upon us, and the time for serious action is past due. In this context it is unsurprising that many observers are turning to the multilateral development banks (MDBs) for this action. These are institutions whose names inspire the potential for grand ac...

The international development finance system is awash with ideas for increasing finance for climate change initiatives. The small island state of Barbados has been a key voice, last year launching the Bridgetown Initiative , calling for a broad set of financing reforms, some focused on the World ...

The principle of a “just transition” is anchored in the 2015 Paris Agreement. But only in recent years has this principle been fully recognized as an enabler and accelerator of coal power decarbonization efforts. A just transition integrates decarbonization efforts with measures to mitigate the dire...

As the RST builds momentum and scores of countries seek its concessional loans and technical assistance, a new CGD paper, The Resilience and Sustainability Trust: Early Learning and Challenges from Costa Rica and Rwanda, provide early learning from the point of view of lower-income countries themsel...