Eye on the IFIs

Planet on Path to Four C Warming, World Bank Warns

By Stephen Leahy
Coal, oil and gas companies and their backers in the financial and investment industry must stop putting billions of dollars into finding and extracting new sources of fossil fuels. If they don't shift their investments, temperatures will soar four to 10 degrees C higher, devastating many parts of the world, the World Bank said Monday.

World Bank Launches Review of Social, Environmental Safeguards

By Carey L. Biron
The World Bank has begun a highly anticipated reappraisal of its social and environmental “safeguards” policies, a process that is slated to take place over the next two years.
Shoppers at the Galerias Pacifico mall in Buenos Aires. Credit: Alicia Nijdam/cc by 2.0

Latin American Middle Class Booming but Fragile

By Carey L. Biron
New data from the World Bank shows that the middle class in Latin America has expanded substantially, growing by 50 percent over the past 10 years despite decades of sluggish poverty reduction.
Courtesy of Bosse Lindquist

Q&A: A Portrait of the Superstars of Celebrity Activism

By Becky Bergdahl
Start a global debate about the underlying reasons why poverty exists – and do it through cinema.

Creditors’ Stalemate Brings Greece to Knife Edge

By Apostolis Fotiadis
Ignoring the thousands of protestors gathered outside the Greek parliament on Wednesday, the government voted in public spending cuts amounting to 17 billion dollars in an economy already on its knees from a lacerated budget.

World Bank Returns to Myanmar, Pledging 245 Million Dollars

By Carey L. Biron
The World Bank has approved a major new development package for Myanmar, marking the first time the Washington-based development institution has lent to the country in a quarter century.

Regional Trade Key to African Food Security, World Bank Says

By Carey L. Biron
The World Bank is urging African countries to strengthen regional food trade, suggesting that food security could be greatly enhanced simply by allowing farmers to trade more easily across the continent.

U.S. Outlier in New Push to Reduce Gas Flaring

By Carey L. Biron
An international coalition led by the World Bank is calling for state-backed and private oil producers to reduce “gas flaring” by an additional 30 percent over the next five years, saying that doing so would be equivalent to taking 60 million cars off of the roads.

Amidst Controversy, World Bank to Review Influential Rankings

By Carey L. Biron
The World Bank released its 10th annual Doing Business report on Monday, using the occasion to track business- and investment-friendly reforms put in place around the world over the past decade.
IMF chief Christine Lagarde has urged members to act on a suite of reform measures that would significantly increase the voices of developing countries, with mixed results. Credit: MEDEF/cc by 2.0

Brazil Frustrated with European “Backtracking” on IMF Reforms

By Carey L. Biron
In the aftermath of last week’s elections to the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s executive board, Brazil and others are expressing frustration that a reforms process aimed at increasing the representation of developing countries is being stymied by European countries.

Donors Urged to Tread Carefully in Myanmar

By Johanna Son
Foreign donors are rushing into Myanmar (formerly Burma), whose government has been pushing the right political buttons as part of its democratic reform process. But development planners and local activists caution that  the best approach should still be ‘easy does it’.

Asia: Saving Grace of Global Economy?

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
Developing countries – ­relegated to the sidelines of the West-led postwar expansion – have emerged as the saving grace of the global economy against a backdrop of calls for a new economic model that can ease the ravages of globalisation and address the lack of confidence in market-based systems.

Women Are the New ‘Emerging Market’

By Zofeen Ebrahim
Empowering women in the business world is not only a smart political decision, but also makes good economic sense.

Greek State on Life Support

By Apostolis Fotiadis
Like a person on life support whose vital functions are failing, the Greek economy is slowly but surely shutting down as radiation from the so-called ‘austerity plan’ erodes public institutions.
Dame Pauline Green. Credit: Beatrice Paez

Q&A: Global Economy, Meet One Billion Co-op Members

By Beatrice Paez
The international rally to take the global cooperative movement to the next level is in full swing at the International Summit of Cooperatives here, which kicked off on Monday.

The Brasilia Consensus, a Model for Latin America

By Estrella Gutiérrez
Following the extreme neoliberalism of the Washington Consensus, which gave rise to a lost decade in social terms, Latin America is experimenting more successfully with a home-grown formula: the Brasilia Consensus, which combines the market economy and social inclusion.
In 2011, Sylvia Meltina

World Bank Refuses Call to Halt Land Deals

By Carey L. Biron
The World Bank has rejected a call to suspend its involvement in large scale agricultural land acquisition following the release of a major report by the international aid agency Oxfam on the negative impact of international land speculation in developing countries.

Less Than Half of International Foreign Aid Is Transparent

By Carey L. Biron
As a major international deadline on foreign assistance transparency draws closer, a new index shows that while donors are becoming more open with their data, still less than half of foreign aid information is openly available.

Haiti’s Two-Million-Dollar Ghost Town

By Correspondents
Just months after the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake killed over 200,000 Haitians and drove another 1.3 million into squalid camps, the Building Back Better Communities (BBBC) project got the green light from the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC), headed by former U.S. president Bill Clinton and then-Haitian prime minister Jean Max Bellerive.

HAITI: Housing Exposition Exposes Waste, Cynicism

By Correspondents
The smells and scenes that greet a visitor to this eerily empty collection of over 60 brightly painted homes and buildings verge on the obscene.

For Development, Jobs May Outweigh Growth, World Bank Says

By Carey L. Biron
The World Bank warned Monday that over the next decade and a half, the world will need to create 600 million new jobs, particularly in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, just to maintain current employment rates.
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