Much of the huge development success seen over the past decades has been achieved thanks to innovative solutions that have been scaled up.
Conditional cash transfer programs like Brazil’s Bolsa Família have proved effective in reducing poverty and ensuring that children attend school and are vaccinated. Innovative financing mechanisms supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others have contributed to the immunization of hundreds of millions of children. UNITAID has pioneered financial schemes such as the airlines ticket levy to fund lifesaving medicines. Muhammad Yunus and others made microcredit a worldwide tool for credits to those who in the past were considered too poor for a bank loan.
Extreme poverty has been halved and progress has been made on all Millennium Development Goals. However, more innovative solutions will need to be taken to scale if we are to end poverty, green our economies and to make sure that all the children now going to school actually learn something!
About the author
Erik Solheim
Erik Solheim is chair of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee since January 2013, and incoming executive director of the U.N. Environment Program. With a solid background in climate, the environment and peace building, Solheim was also Norway’s minister for international development from 2005 to 2012.
