GEGI: Morris on MDB’s for the Century’s Development Challenges
The Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI), a research initiative at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, hosted Scott Morris, Director of the U.S. Development Policy Initiative at the Center for Global Development, at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies for a discussion on how multilateral development banks can address this century’s development challenges.
Morris discussed the outcomes of a high level panel on future of multilateral development banking that the Center for Global Development held which convened a geographically diverse group from the private sector and academia that broadly reflected the diversity of the MDBs’ shareholder countries.
““We recruited a global panel and we tried to be fairly balanced geographically in terms of backgrounds of the individuals, but they were there representing themselves and their own views,” Morris said. “It is a challenge to bring a group of actors like this together and try to get them to come to some agreement on what they want to say, what areas they want to explore and what a consensus view looks like on these issues.”
According to Morris, the panel’s work culminated in a report to the shareholders of the MDB system with five key recommendations including a mandate for the World Bank aimed at promoting development-relevant global public goods, more focus on climate-friendly infrastructure, a suggestion to maintain concessional finance and a better balance between the World Bank and African Development Bank, contingency set-asides for crises and a suggestion for shareholders to review finance and mandates every five years.
Speaking about the recommendation on climate-friendly infrastructure specifically, Morris said the panel suggested shareholders should support a scaling up in support for sustainable infrastructure from $50 billion to $200 billion a year including stronger efforts to engage the private sector.
GEGI previously hosted Morris in February 2016 for a discussion on the relationship between the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the United States.