![]() ![]() Yet due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and limited and high-priced natural gas supplies, coal-fired power plants are seeing their closures postponed across the world, and coal mining has accelerated.įacing these overlapping crises, a pressing danger for the developing world is that the sharp slowdown in global growth deepens into a global recession, as the World Bank discussed in a September report. The World Bank Group has not financed new coal projects since 2010 and has been working actively with developing countries and partners in the global community to reverse the trend toward increased use of high-carbon emission fuels. This set of challenges receives the largest share of World Bank Group resources and focus. Both adaptation by countries and people harmed by climate change and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions are urgently needed. Man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change, which in turn is having tragic impacts on development in multiple ways. Developing countries are being hit by more frequent and more severe climate-related disasters. Droughts are taking a toll in the Horn of Africa and in South America, affecting food production and hydropower generation and throwing nine million more people into severe food insecurity across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia alone. The recent floods in Pakistan have left over 1,500 people dead. This indicates that education systems are now further away from reaching quality education for all. Moreover, new challenges already loom in the form of demographic pressures: by 2030, according to UN population projections, more than 1 in 4 primary-school-age children will live in Sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the highest learning poverty. COVID-19 worsened the global learning crisis and resulted in the worst shock to education and learning in recorded history. The COVID-19 pandemic – which alone led to over six million deaths – geopolitical conflicts, and extreme weather events have hurt countries and people worldwide, with the poor bearing the brunt, especially women and girls.Įvidence by the World Bank shows that 70% of children in low- and middle-income countries are in learning poverty – which is the share of children who are unable to read or understand a basic text by age 10. The human consequence of these overlapping crises is catastrophic. These shockwaves have hit development at a time when many developing countries are also struggling in other areas: governance and rule of law debt sustainability climate adaptation and mitigation and limited fiscal budgets to counteract the severe reversals in development from the COVID-19 pandemic, including in health and education. Under current policies, global energy production may take years to diversify away from Russia, prolonging the stagflation risk discussed in the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects report from June 2022. ![]() The developing world is facing an extremely challenging near-term outlook shaped by sharply higher food, fertilizer, and energy prices, rising interest rates and credit spreads, currency depreciation, and capital outflows. The report also shows a 4% decline in global median income, the first decline since our measurements of median income began in 1990. The report shows that poverty had been steadily declining through the 1990s and 2000s, progress had slowed by 2015, and extreme poverty rose by roughly 70 million when the pandemic hit. Of concern to our mission, our upcoming Poverty and Shared Prosperity report suggests that the deterioration in development progress began well ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic. ![]() Our financing to developing countries has expanded dramatically in recent years, especially for climate-related finance, which reached $31.7 billion in fiscal year 2022. We leverage shareholder equity and annual contributions to provide grants and make loans to developing countries to help identify and respond to development challenges. The World Bank Group’s mission is to alleviate poverty and boost shared prosperity. This has consequences for all of us due to the interlinked nature of the global economy and civilizations around the world. A series of harsh events and unprecedented macroeconomic policies are combining to throw development into crisis. Thank you to the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and the King Center on Global Development for the invitation.Īs we gather in this prestigious institution, a tough reality confronts the global economy – and especially the developing world. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |