Publication

COP27 is of paramount importance if ambitious global climate action is to be achieved. Lack of action will have dire consequences for Africa, other developing regions and the world more broadly. Despite complex global geopolitical dynamics, climate action, and specifically policy implementation, must remain high on the political agenda of all countries. It is crucial to minimise the gap between current pledges and what is needed to avoid devastating climate change for Africa.

By 2050, virtually every child on earth – over 2 billion children – is forecast to face more frequent heatwaves, regardless of whether the world achieves a ‘low greenhouse gas emission scenario’ with an estimated 1.7 degrees of warming in 2050 or a ‘very high greenhouse gas emission scenario’ with an estimated 2.4 degrees of warming in 2050. These findings underscore the urgent need to adapt the services children rely on as unavoidable impacts of global heating unfold.

This paper provides a broad overview of how multilateral peace operations have responded to cholera and Ebola epidemics and the HIV/AIDS and Covid-19 pandemics over the past 20 years. Such public health crises can be especially lethal in fragile and conflict-affected areas.

Armed forces in the Indo-Pacific region remain dependent on weapon systems imported from foreign suppliers. This is despite the efforts of many governments in the Indo-Pacific to implement policies that support the development of local arms industrial capabilities with the aim of increasing self-reliance. This report develops three indicators to give a score and regional ranking of self-reliance in arms production to 12 jurisdictions in the Indo-Pacific region.

Regulatory reforms have long been a focus for Southeast Asian nations, often as a way to improve the business climate and policy frameworks for trade and investment. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has spurred countries around the world to review and update their regulatory policies to respond to the current crisis and prepare for the next one.

This report highlights the implications of 1.5°C scenarios for the phase-out of fossil fuels and the scale-up to renewables, barriers to transitions and solutions to such challenges, and tools for governments and financial institutions to navigate the current energy crisis while maintaining climate ambition. It also looks at the implications of the war in Ukraine for energy systems and explores whether Europe can meet its gas demand without the Russian supply.

After a decade-long period of low borrowing costs, a confluence of rising interest rates, inflation, and commodity shocks have raised the likelihood of overlapping debt crises in developing countries. The International Monetary Fund now estimates that 30% of emerging market countries and 60% of low-income countries could face trouble paying down their debts or will soon.

This guide provides a framework to strengthen the role of development co-operation for mobilising foreign direct investment (FDI) and enhancing its positive impact in developing countries

The claim that social protection is a luxury good—with a national income elasticity exceeding unity—has been influential. The paper tests the “luxury good hypothesis” using newly-assembled data on social protection spending across countries since 1995, treating the pandemic period separately, as it entailed a large expansion in social protection efforts.

This report focuses on firms and labor markets in Latin America and the Caribbean during the COVID-19 crisis and the highly uncertain recovery phase now underway. The ongoing Russian war in Ukraine, volatility in international financial markets, and fears of global stagflation (low growth and high inflation) combine with the impacts of the pandemic to make the economic environment particularly challenging.

The 2022 edition focuses on tertiary education, looking at the rise of tertiary attainment and the associated benefits for individuals and for societies. A specific chapter is dedicated to the COVID crisis and the shift from crisis management to recovery. Two new indicators on professional development for teachers and school heads and on the profile of academic staff complement this year's edition.

This report explores how aid for trade can be modernized to support Asia and the Pacific’s recovery from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.

For today’s middle-income countries in Africa, innovation is essential to sustain growth and promote the transition to high-income status. This paper begins by providing an in-depth review of the region’s innovation performance during the last three decades.

The term “conflict-related sexual violence”, as used in the present report, refers to rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, enforced sterilization, forced marriage, and any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity perpetrated against women, men, girls or boys that is directly or indirectly linked to a conflict.

This annual report outlines how the Pacific Private Sector Development Initiative (PSDI) supported the enabling environment for business and helped foster inclusive private sector-led economic growth in the Pacific during 2021.

These guidelines provide practical guidance for development partners to integrate migration into policies, plans, and programmes. The aim of the Guidelines is to improve the efficacy of development cooperation by strengthening understanding and know-how of partners in non-migration sectors to deal with the ways in which migration and sustainable development interact.

Culture and education together are the backbone of human development. Yet culture and education are insufficiently harnessed together as complementary dimensions that can leverage social inclusion, skills acquisition as well as the enhancement of knowledge.

Terrestrial and marine species, as well as timber, illegally harvested in Mexico for Chinese markets increasingly threaten Mexico’s biodiversity. Among the species poached in Mexico and smuggled to China, sometimes via the United States, are reptiles, sea cucumbers, totoaba, abalone, sharks, and increasingly also likely jaguars as well as various species of rosewood.

The UN 2030 Agenda’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the COVID-19 pandemic share two important characteristics. They are global challenges that if not met, pose risks to all citizens. COVID-19 has illuminated three complementary, compelling actions that can address these challenges—work across silos; visibly use science in policy; and harness simultaneous global interruption to habits. This commentary describes these using worked examples and suggests actions for policymakers and other leaders. Acknowledging that the full SDG agenda is of much broader multidimensional scope than the COVID-19 pandemic, the SDG examples focus on environmental sustainability.

Cocoa, an unsavoury sweet? Final Report