Writing in Project Syndicate, Mariana Mazzucato of University College London and James Anderson of Bloomberg Philanthropies introduce their project to develop a new public sector index of the capabilities of cities to solve critical challenges. “What critical skills, processes, and structures”, the authors write, “will a given municipality need in order to detect emergent issues…(Read more)
The World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Gender Gap Report is out and progress toward gender parity in the economy is slow. The top ranked countries are almost all small nations. As the report observes, “no country has yet achieved full gender parity, although the top nine countries (Iceland, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, Nicaragua,…(Read more)
One of the concrete wins for the Global South at the Macron-Motley Climate Finance in late June 2023 in Pairs was the announcement by the European Union and other development partners of a Euro 2.5 B Just Energy Partnership for Senegal. “This partnership will help accelerate the deployment of renewable energies, so as to increase…(Read more)
The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women has released the report of its Asia-Pacific Regional Consultation on the theme of gender equality in the digital age. The consultation was convened by the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and UN Women’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, in…(Read more)
Global Affairs Canada has released a new report entitled A Journey of Purpose: Learning to Scale Gender Change in Canadian Climate Finance in Developing Economies. Authored by Dr. Edward Jackson for the Department’s Climate Finance Division, the discussion paper examines Canada’s USD 3B long-term debt portfolio with multilateral banks and funds aimed at financing major…(Read more)
At the blog of the American Evaluation Association, AEA 365, evaluation consultant Sylva Ferretti has contributed a two-part reflection on working with AI in evaluation, particularly ChatGPT. Overall, she finds this AI tool to be useful, additive, and even progressive in her practice in the field of international development and humanitarian assistance. ChatGPT is, especially, able…(Read more)
In late 2022, the first session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including marine litter, was held in Punta del Este, Uruguay. At the conference, UNEP’s Executive Director, Inger Andersen, called for a broad, inclusive and science-driven agreement that provides adequate resources for developing countries. “We…(Read more)
On December 19, 2022, following 116-country member High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, co-chaired by Costa Rica and France, “celebrated the inclusion of a historic target to protect or conserve at least 30% of the planet’s land and ocean by 2030 (30×30) in the United Nations Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework approved today at the…(Read more)
Writing for Canary Media on January 2, 2023, Jeff St. John surveys the potential for and barriers to renewable energy growth in the United States, asking whether the Inflation Reduction Act can power the sector to overcome significant obstacles and achieve new levels of scale and capacity. Specifically, to what extent can the IRA reduce…(Read more)
On December 13, 2022, LightCastle Partners, a Dhaka-based management consulting firm, hosted an expert panel entitled “Gender Inclusion through Investing: How can we do that?” The event was co-sponsored by the Biniyog Briddhi Programme, a Swiss-funded initiative that provides impact-linked financing to social tech enterprises in Bangladesh (see https://www.sie-b.org/) and which had organized a previous…(Read more)
