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By Hala Abou-Ali, Amira El-Ayouti, Mahmoud Mohieldin

Although Egypt accounts for only 0.6 percent of annual global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, it is becoming one of the most heavily affected by extreme weather patterns. In this working paper, Abou-Ali, Elayouty, and Mohieldin examine how well Egypt sets out a pathway for climate action. With the urgent need to translate climate ambitions into action and results, Egypt needs to harness the long-standing experience in the climate-related policy of other countries, including those in the OECD, to seize the opportunities available in the global wave of achieving climate goals. The most salient obstacles to Egypt’s transition can be categorized into three main pillars. The first relates to data systems availability to track and measure progress toward climate goals. The second concerns the implementation capacity for efforts relating to emissions mitigation, adaptation and resilience, and multilateral and multi-disciplinary collaboration. The third impediment is financing, investments, and business action mobilization. Finally, the working paper presents opportunities for progress in critical sectors such as agriculture, power, and transport. Egypt has a unique opportunity to transition to a more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient economy by undertaking urgent action and laying the basics for financial, economic, and social recovery. 

What is one main message from your chapter?  

Egypt needs to adopt a holistic approach that urgently tackles adaptation needs, fast-tracks mitigation investments, and supports more Egyptians pivot from struggling to succeeding. 

What presents the biggest opportunity?

Egypt has a great opportunity to play a key leadership role in promoting development and reinforcing cooperation regarding liquified natural gas and renewable energy-produced green hydrogen supplies between Africa and Europe. 

What serves as the biggest challenge?  

Egypt is highly vulnerable to heatwaves, sea level rise, increased soil salination, rainfall retention, and desertification. Leading to potentially devastating impacts on the country’s economy, food security as well as people’s health and wellbeing. Hence, it has become critical to identify and evaluate strategies for adaptation. 

What gives you the most hope?

Egypt possesses an abundance of land, sunny weather, and high wind speeds, making it a prime location for renewable energy projects. The government can easily harness climate technology innovation through fixing some economic incentives such as offering adoption subsidies and revisiting some of the environmental regulations. 

Download the full working paper here.

      

By Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Utkarsh Patel

One of the most critical pushes to address the climate crisis is getting public and private finance flowing to climate action, especially in emerging markets and developing economies. This working paper attempts to quantify the scale and possible composition of the international financial assistance required to help developing countries fulfill their climate change mitigation and adaption targets and suggests how this might be agreed upon in international negotiations. First, Ahluwalia and Patel provide a brief historical review of how the commitment to provide financial assistance has evolved since the start of the negotiations in the UNFCCC in 1992. Second, they review estimates emerging from different studies of the additional investment that developing countries will have to make to meet the challenge of containing global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. Third, they recognize that although international financing has a big role to play, it is unrealistic to think that all the additional investment needed must come from international sources. They argue that developing countries should realize that at least half the additional investment will have to come from domestic sources, with the rest coming from international sources both official and private. In this context, they reason that multilateral development banks (MDBs) have a critical role in leveraging private finance to raise the amount of financial flows to the required level. Finally, the authors provide recommendations for developing countries to organize themselves for more realistic financial commitments, and, through the G20 forum, push for an agreement with the G7 on increasing the capital base of the MDBs to enable the banks to lend at the scale needed. 

Q & A with the authors What is one main message from your chapter?  

It is unrealistic for developing countries to expect that all the investment needed for climate change mitigation and adaption would come as international assistance. Nearly half of it would need to be financed through additional domestic effort, while a large part of the remaining amount could come as concessional or non-concessional loans from the MDBs, and as private sector investments. 

What presents the biggest opportunity?

Unabated climate change is bound to cost the global economy trillions of dollars in forgone income due to loss of productivity and collapse of ecosystems. It is in the best interest of everyone to invest in climate change mitigation and adaption, where every unit of investment will yield multiple of that in benefits.

What serves as the biggest challenge?  

The erosion of trust in multilateral institutions and lack of political support among the major developed countries which control these institutions for expanding MDB lending to the scale needed. 

What gives you the most hope?

Private corporations are increasingly focusing on decarbonization and climate change mitigation. Some of the biggest corporations have committed to reducing emissions from their global operations to net zero. Many large financial institutions with trillions in private capital have come together to commit to climate change-related investments in the form of alliances such as the GFANZ. However, we do not yet have a credible international mechanism to mobilize funds on the scale needed. 

Download the full working paper here.

      

By Mizan Khan, Saleemul Huq

In this working paper, Khan and Huq describe Bangladesh as the ground zero of climate vulnerability, due to its dense population and exposure to floods, cyclones, sea level rise, and salinity incursions. However, Bangladeshi politicians remain committed to economic growth, with environmental sustainability as the second priority. Some segments of the business are, nevertheless, starting to commit to change. The key technical issues currently debated under Bangladesh’s “just transition” are around energy access, social equity, and building resilience—areas where international support has been less forthcoming compared to mitigation. With a low domestic tax regime, Bangladesh has limited economic capacity to significantly expand social programs, and its imminent graduation out of Least Developed Country status will further limit its access to concessional international assistance. Khan and Huq suggest using Bangladesh’s strong civil society organizations to play a more significant role, especially in encouraging green processes in private companies in the country’s critical garment sectors through promotion of renewable energy. They offer up important suggestions for nature-based solutions and a unique proposal for encouraging climate-resilient migrant-friendly towns as an adaptive response.  

Q & A with the authors What is one main message from your chapter?

Given the successful track record in economic growth in Bangladesh for the last decades, it is time that together with its upcoming graduation into middle-income country, Bangladesh will put a dedicated focus on ensuring environmental sustainability. 

What presents the biggest opportunity?

The solid record of innovative social engineering and women’s empowerment which contributed to rapid reduction of poverty level. 

What serves as the biggest challenge?

The biggest challenge lies in converting Bangladesh’s huge youth labor force into a great force for just and green transition.  

What gives you the most hope?

Resource constraints will push as a necessity for more innovative economic, social and environmental transformation. 

Download the full working paper here.

      

The World Bank is poised to get a new president in 2023, as David Malpass announced his departure on Wednesday.

By Trupti Deshpande, Former Senior Associate and Spurthi Ravuri, Senior Associate, CSTEP

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the transportation sector globally, pushing more people away from public transport and towards privately owned cars. How has it impacted emissions in India and can electric vehicles be the answer to “cleaner and greener” transportation?

The post Can electric vehicles drive climate change action in India? appeared first on Development Matters.

Current disease outbreaks highlight the urgent need for every country to ramp up its care systems, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief told journalists on Wednesday.

An independent UN human rights expert on Wednesday called on Bangladesh to draft laws to better protect those affected by leprosy.

By George Ingram, Naheed Sarabi

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has under review a draft revision of its 2012 resilience policy for fragile and conflict environments. As reported in the OECD’s “States of Fragility 2022,” fragility has been rising in recent years and is present across a diversity of country contexts. Of the 60 countries identified as fragile, 23 are low-income, and 33 are middle-income. Approximately half of the more than 100 countries in which USAID operates are on the list, highlighting that resilience should be at the core of the agency’s operating procedures.

Principles of resilience

The draft policy sets out seven principles for resilience:

Use evidence and analysis Employ cross-sectoral approaches Operationalize humanitarian-development-peace Strengthen systems for resilience Practice adaptive management Enable local agency and ownership Ensure equity and inclusion  

These seven principles represent not just good practice for building resilience, but good practice for development. It is noteworthy that one of those principles puts USAID in sync with the OECD’s 2022 report on fragility, the theme of which is bringing coherence to the humanitarian-development-peace complex.

There are a handful of topics that deserve further elaboration in the draft, but one rises to the level of being an eighth principle—donor coordination and collaboration.

Donor Coordination: The draft includes references to coordination, but principally to coordination among U.S. government agencies and with local partners. This coordination is important, but equally critical is coherence among donor policies and programs. The United States cannot advance development globally or in a country acting alone. The alternative—coordination among donors—needs to be at the center of donor efforts. Without question, donor coordination is easier to commit to than to execute, as each donor has its own priorities and complexity of operating procedures and requirements. But there are mechanisms for overcoming those difficulties: construct donor programs around a recipient country’s development strategy (as happens with education through the Global Partnership); collaborate around a country-led platform, as recommended in the seminal USIP report “Preventing Extremism in Fragile States“; put funding in another donor program that is working well (as UK Aid is doing with the USAID-funded TAPAS e-procurement program in Ukraine).

As the largest contributor of ODA, the U.S. can lead by example in donor coordination on account of the impact it can have by the way it operates. For example, over a 20-year period in Afghanistan, the U.S. contributed to multi-donor trust funds like the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF). The ARTF, administered by the World Bank, implemented the largest national programs on health, education, and community development. ARTF’s role was crucial in providing budget support to the government and instrumental in building systems, one of the principles of resilience policy. The U.S. participation in the fund helped keep donor priorities in line with those of the ARTF. Such platforms are especially critical in fragile environments and during periods of political and economic shocks where domestic structures fail to coordinate donor efforts.

However, lessons learned from past experiences and the implementation of frameworks such as the “New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States” advocated by g7+ countries highlight the challenges of donor coordination. For Afghanistan (a member of g7+), aligning international development cooperation with government priorities, ownership, and achieving effective aid delivery was an ongoing concern. Despite international commitments to align ODA with government programs, according to a donor cooperation report by the Afghan government, the actual practice fell short, resulting in a financial gap in delivering government priorities. There was a lack of consensus as to what alignment with government priorities meant, leaving discretion to individual donors and sometimes the priorities of their constituencies. These challenges underscore the need for continued efforts to improve coordination and alignment between donors and recipient countries in order to achieve the goals of development cooperation and to move from statements to actual measurable practices.

Topics deserving further elaboration

Trust: The draft should provide greater attention to the triad of trust, politics, and social dynamics in a country. The lack of trust by the citizens of a country in the government and institutions is more often than not at the core of fragility. Fragility reflects a breakdown in the social contract between a people and the government, which, to be rebuilt, requires government leaders and agencies to listen and respond to the grievances and hopes of citizens. Too often donors design programs that are technically proficient but irrelevant or even counterproductive because they ignore the political and social contexts in a country.

Without a doubt, this was likely a core problem with much of the billions of assistance that donors poured into attempting to bring stability to Afghanistan. The Ministry of Finance data in 2018 showed that only 33 percent of total grants to Afghanistan were on-budget. This created a relationship gap between national and local authorities, and between government and citizens, in the delivery of services and so failed to strengthen trust by means of the social contract between people and government.

Risk: Donors must take greater risks and be more innovative. In fragile environments, donors are operating in an “unknown environment complicated by unexpected changes”—due to the difficulty in comprehending the underlying political and social foundations of a country and the frequently altering dynamics. Change is difficult and complicated in fragile environments and requires donors to take steps beyond the “true and tested” approaches or just work with new partners. The draft policy appropriately raises adaptability to the level of a key principle, as donor programs must tack with changing circumstances and move with agility away from efforts failing to produce results.

Sustained engagement: Building resilience and stability requires going beyond the typical donor timeframe of two-to-five years. It is a 20-25-50-year process requiring sustained, focused engagement. Progress is never linear and requires sustained donor support over the long haul. The predictability of external support is crucial for long-term development planning. Case in point: unpredictable resources limited Afghanistan’s ability to create multi-year programs and budgets. Donors would make four-year funding commitments, but yearly obligations often failed to fulfill those commitments and ignored Afghanistan’s budget cycle.

Managing partnerships: The draft policy does not address a key challenge in fragile environments—how to engage and how to manage relations with partners who may be unstable, have questionable commitment to reform, and in whom the donor does not have full confidence.

Private sector: Consistent with the World Bank’s “Strategy for Fragility, Conflict, and Violence 2020-2025,” which posits that “the private sector lies at the center of sustainable development model in fragile-conflict-violence settings,” the draft policy asserts that local and international business can play an important role in the transition to economic growth and stability. But the draft policy does not explain USAID’s specific role, and how it can help lay the groundwork for private sector investment. This requires work at the macroeconomic level and in building supportive systems, and at the transaction level. This is an arena in which collaboration is essential. USAID needs to join its resource and capabilities with those of other agencies, specifically the DFC, that are engaged in mobilizing development finance.

Small-to-scale: As articulated in the 2018 “Stabilization Assistance Review,” projects should start small, essentially in a test phase, and be scaled up only upon proof-of-concept. This approach applies in any development context (not just in fragile environments), requires ongoing feedback and adaptive management, and is best understood in the roadmap provided by Ann Mei Chang in “Lean Impact.”

Flexibility and innovation: Service delivery and locally-led development require innovative approaches in conflict environments. The Community Development Councils (CDCs) in Afghanistan are a successful example of how service delivery through locally-led platforms can build trust between people and government for 18 years. Studies show that CDCs have been more efficient in delivering emergency response, operating in areas under the Taliban control during the republic; as well as provision of basic infrastructure at a lower cost and up to international benchmarks. The CDCs were capacitated and coordinated by the government to ensure ownership and efficiency. While monitoring of education and health services has been successful, delivery of agriculture programs proved challenging.

From projects to programs: The U.S. and the Afghan government launched a unique effort to review the U.S. civilian assistance in Afghanistan. It was a major step in information sharing with the host country about the nature of off-budget assistance. A major finding from the government side was that a shift from projects (the U.S. was administering 155 projects) to programs was needed to achieve development goals and improve efficiency and coordination.

Conclusion

The need for greater resilience is present in all countries—those that are extremely poor, emerging countries, and even wealthy nations. But the need varies depending on contexts that are specific to each country. The policies laid out in the draft resilience update represent best practices and need only minor additions and elaboration. Whatever the details of the final policy, resilience should drive USAID’s programs in all countries and serve to inform the policies and programs of other U.S. government agencies and other donors.

      

The African transition to a green economy has the potential to create a plurality of green job opportunities for African youth. But what are green jobs and how can they be a solution to youth unemployment and climate change in Africa?
In this video, we present the story of Olivia Onyemaobi, Nigerian entrepreneur and founder of Pad-Up Creations, a social enterprise producing affordable and eco-friendly sanitary pads in partnership with CFYE.

You can learn more about green jobs and the future of work in Africa here.

This collaborative research project is an initiative of INCLUDE and Palladium in the context of the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment.

 

Het bericht Green jobs & the future of work in Africa: the story of Olivia Onyemaobi and Pad-Up Creations verscheen eerst op INCLUDE Platform.

One in three prisoners in Europe suffer from mental health disorders, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a new report launched on Tuesday.

Women leaders called for swift, concerted action to advance gender rights at the first International Conference on Women’s Transformational Leadership, in Juba, South Sudan on Tuesday.

A civil society report on the implementation of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) at the national level will be launched on 22 February 2023, at 9AM CET, 2PM GMT online, in English, French, and Spanish.

The seventh of its kind, the document aims to provide insights on and assess the 2022 Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) participated in by 44 countries, and offer recommendations to inform discussions on SDG delivery, to help guide improved reporting and implementation at the mid-point of the 2030 Agenda.

The report finds that as the world began to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, there were some signs of stronger commitments to SDG reporting and implementation; there was also a broader number of civil society parallel reports prepared. The pledge to Leave No One Behind and the aim to connect delivery with the Paris Agreement were featured in a high number of reports. However, there was limited discussion of the challenges for civic freedoms and also a reduction in references to local implementation.

The launch event will feature key findings from the report and hear from experts and government representatives will speak on how they aim to build on the lessons learned to ensure effective follow up and review of the SDGs.

The report was compiled by Action for Sustainable Development, Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND), BOND, Cepei, Cooperation Canada, CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE), Forus, Global Focus, International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), Save The Children, Sightsavers, and World Vision International.

Register for the event here, and follow CPDE on Twitter for more updates.#

The post SAVE THE DATE: Launch of civil society report on SDGs implementation appeared first on CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness.

By Brad Olsen, Muhannad Jarrah

“To err is to be human,” wrote Alexander Pope. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts,” Churchill proclaimed. An African proverb announces that “Only those who do nothing never make mistakes.”

We know that in many cases the meaning of these adages is true—not just in life but for scaling education innovations for sustainable impact. Yet, for organizational and cultural reasons, global development contexts disincentivize talking openly about our scaling mistakes while the work is still underway. Similar to other professions (like medicine, governance, and education leadership), we in the scaling field shy away from articulating to others the mistakes we make as individuals or teams.

We focus on “challenges” instead, because externally caused difficulties are safer to discuss. We employ the passive voice—”mistakes were made”—to separate ourselves from what went wrong. Our monitoring, evaluation, and learning systems (MEL) often promote the M and the E but demote the L. And when we share “lessons learned,” we typically detach them from the mistakes that gave rise to them in the first place.

Many contexts discourage the candid sharing of mistakes

We’re reluctant to admit our mistakes because we do not want to be perceived as incompetent—or because we don’t want to lose our job, funding, or legitimacy. We are disinclined to admit mistakes because society has imposed on us an imposter syndrome, nudges us toward fixed mindsets, and weighs many people down with stereotype threats.

That’s too bad, because this buries effective mechanisms for improvement: processes like trial and error, experimentation, and honest course correcting. When those proven learning techniques are relegated to the shadows, scaling suffers. As Adam Grant wrote, “The harder you make it to voice problems, the harder it becomes to solve them.”

Michael Fullan defines scaling as “learning by doing.” John List writes about the regular need to ask yourself if it is time to pivot or scale down your innovation, or if you’re not the right person to be scaling it. The literature on scaling repeatedly tells us these things and yet, when the consequences feel hazardous, it becomes irrational to do so.

We should do more to establish professional spaces where we can share and learn from our mistakes without losing face. On a personal level, sharing the scaling mistakes we make liberates us from the discomfiting straitjacket of perfectionism. From a learning standpoint, it allows us to analyze what went wrong and learn something new. On an organizational level, it underscores the fact that innovation is always about erecting progress out of the shards of our collective mistakes. And from a scaling standpoint, it makes visible what is sometimes hidden: Scaling is an imperfect science often best accomplished by trial and error.

We know that none of this is as simple as it sounds. Who can share their mistakes to whom in what context is linked to power, hierarchies, and the extent to which listeners are supportive. And accountability is a necessary but entangled part of any quality control system (yet could often be improved by way of critical interrogation and reasonable adjustment).

Morbidity and mortality conferences

The medical profession uses “morbidity and mortality conferences” as a protected space where peers meet to analyze cases that went wrong. By opening mistakes up for supportive scrutiny, rather than blame and punishment, medical professionals can identify patterns of error, learn from others’ mistakes, and modify their practices and judgment to reduce the likelihood of the mistakes occurring elsewhere or again.

Scaling could use such a space. In our ROSIE project, we recently hosted a virtual workshop to try out just such a space. We first presented cultural and psychological reasons why talking about our mistakes is disincentivized, and what supports and protections must be in place to create a trusting space in scaling work. We did this not only to create psychological safety for the workshop itself, but also to model such behavior so scaling teams can create similar trust in their own contexts.

In small groups we discussed the mistakes we’ve made in our scaling and research work and mistakes we’ve seen others make. What came out of the workshop was a stronger learning community, several collaboratively generated ideas for how to leverage mistakes for individual and collective learning, and a list of actual lessons learned.

Some scaling lessons learned from mistakes made

1. During the initial scaling project proposal stage, conduct a rigorous analysis of the broader system in which you will scale.
2. Don’t neglect introductory and foundational scaling conversations with team members and stakeholders. For example, collectively define “scalability” and “sustainability.”
3. Identify your uninterrogated assumptions about practices, beliefs, and cultures of others and be sure to see things from your participants’ perspectives—not just through your own eyes. Many times, it’s the false assumptions about what lies outside your model that will complicate scaling.
4. Overwork has consequences: When everyone is working to their limit, it’s hard to notice mistakes, learn from them, or be patient when others make them.
5. You need personal backchannels with high-level decisionmakers alongside the formal communication pipelines.
6. It’s better to go slow when concerned about electoral politics or government turnover to allow for a safer or more stable process of planning with government.
7. Always have a Plan B.
8. Talking about mistakes with donors depends on the donor. Some donors have unrealistic expectations; others are hungry for the conversation.
9. If leaders (and funders) model this process by sharing their own mistakes, it becomes easier for the rest of us to follow suit.
10. Put an agenda item on recurring team meetings that asks, “What mistakes have we noticed recently and how can we address and learn from them?”

If the broader education scaling community—including funders, universities, and development organizations—can establish productive, trusting spaces for sharing and learning from our scaling mistakes, then we can incentivize authentic and collaborative peer learning, improve the trial-and-error dimension of scaling, and offer compelling contributions to the knowledge base. Such a culture shift should encourage the kind of mindset shift that turns missteps into progress.

Note: This project is supported by the Global Partnership for Education Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX), a joint partnership between the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of GPE, IDRC or its Board of Governors. 

Brookings is committed to quality, independence, and impact in all of its work. Activities supported by its donors reflect this commitment and the analysis and recommendations are solely determined by the scholar.

      

: Wed, 19 Oct 2022 HH:mm:ss
From fair access to education and poverty reduction to combating climate change - digital innovations are more important than ever before.

: Fri, 24 Jun 2022 HH:mm:ss
Digital public infrastructures contribute to greater transparency and respect for human rights. A global alliance is committed to establishing these systems.

: Thu, 03 Mar 2022 HH:mm:ss
In his role as a business scout, Ansgar Pinkowski is heavily involved in promoting green hydrogen in Brazil. In our interview, he talks about the path from theory to implementation.

Nagorno-Karabakh is an ethnic Armenian enclave within the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan. In the early 1990s Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a bloody war resulting in Armenia’s de-facto control of Nagorno-Karabakh.

For most of the last 30 years this was a frozen conflict with occasional flareups only fitful progress towards a diplomatic and political resolution. Then, in September 2020 Azerbaijan launched an offensive resulting in the rout of the Armenian army and the capture of large swaths of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shaken up a ceasefire agreement and over the course of 2022, Azerbaijan has expanded its control of key strategic territories in the region.

According to my guest today Olesya Vartanyan there is a high risk that Azerbaijan may press its military advantage and resume a full scale conflict in the region.

Olesya Vartanyan is the International Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst for the South Caucasus region. We kick off discussing a worsening humanitarian crisis in parts of Nagorno Karabakh, sparked by a blockade of a key corridor linking Armenia to key parts of Nagorno-Karabakh. We then discuss the trends in the conflict and diplomacy, including a hopeful move by the European Union to approve a civilian monitoring mission.

To listen to the episode on your favorite podcast listening app, go here.  

The post Will War Resume Between Armenia and Azerbaijan? appeared first on UN Dispatch.

Since the 20th Party Congress in October 2022, China’s politics have produced surprises, from its abrupt exit from zero-COVID lockdowns to an overhaul of property sector regulations and an easing of restrictions on the technology sector. There also have been debates about whether China is moderating its diplomatic tone, and if so, whether the shift is superficial or substantive.

On Friday, March 10, the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings will host a panel discussion featuring China experts from varied backgrounds who will evaluate the recent policy shifts within China, their underlying causes, and potential implications for the future.

Viewers may submit questions by emailing events@brookings.edu, on Twitter @BrookingsFP using #ChinaPolitics.

      

Support “turbocharged” efforts to get back on track to realizing the Sustainable Development Goals, the UN chief told the General Assembly on Monday.

Sport can change the world, famous footballers and grassroots gamechangers alike said at a roundtable discussion on Monday, highlighting a new UN podcast series to mark the first International Day for the Prevention of Violent Extremism, as and when Conducive to Terrorism.