Development leaders on the biggest challenges facing the world today

In the lead-up to Devex World, Devex’s annual development summit, which took place in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, we asked a range of global development leaders what they think are the most pressing challenges facing the community today, and what they see as the solutions. A few common themes emerged, particularly around climate, multilateralism, and equity. Read on to discover some of the responses we received. The following comments have been edited for length and clarity. Tony Elumelu, Nigerian philanthropist and founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation I think the most pressing global issue the world faces today is youth unemployment, youth restiveness, especially in developing parts of the world. And it is a problem that all of us collectively [must] deal with if you want a sustainable and equitable world … The future of the world belongs to the young men and women across the globe. Until and unless we economically empower them and feed them economic hope, something to look forward to, the world will not have peace. [This issue] is beyond one country, beyond a government. It requires a concerted effort of all of us. And I believe that the global development community has the capacity, especially in partnership with the private sector, to make a difference. … No one person or organization or institution alone can do it. … Multilateralism [is] what we need to make the world a better place. Odile Renaud-Basso, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development We face a lot of challenges, including, in the short term, food and energy security. But the number one existing challenge we face in the global development community and as members of the human race is climate change. We have to shift our economies and societies to a model that is sustainable, and we have to do so before it's too late. Time is really running out. Dr. Ayoade Alakija, WHO special envoy for the ACT-Accelerator I don't know that you could pick one single issue at this moment. I think equity covers it all, for me … be it climate justice, be it health justice, be it food justice … I think we all need to hone into that word and say that the inequity in this world is what has brought us to where we are today. And that is what we as a development community need to come to grips with. … We need a new Bretton Woods moment. We need a complete new ordering of the global architecture — be it health, be it development, whatever it is — because those models do not work. They were created for a world that does not exist today … It is only by opening ourselves to the right type of multilateralism — not the multilateralism that is led just by the global north, or that just has inclusivity as a token. … True equity is going to require true global leadership. And it's going to require a disordering. There's a reckoning coming if we don't do it. Rory Stewart, senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs The most extreme issue facing the global development community today remains extreme poverty, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where the number of people in poverty has doubled since 1980; where people are living in some cases on $6 a month. This remains the greatest shame facing our civilization and our culture, and something which is eminently addressable by the world and where we have failed terribly to do our duty. The single most important step we can take to end extreme poverty is to have the confidence to make unconditional cash transfers. Giving cash to communities gives them choice, gives them freedom, allows them to determine their needs. It's far more efficient, far more effective, and has a much more rapid [transformative] impact than anything else that we can do in international development. “I don't know that you could pick one single issue at this moment. I think equity covers it all, for me.” --— Dr. Ayoade Alakija, WHO special envoy for the ACT-Accelerator I believe the international development community is up for the challenges because we are more attentive than we've ever been before to evidence, to randomized control studies, to opening our minds to the possibilities of things like cash transfer. We're getting out of a world in which we tell other people what to do and are beginning to trust others to solve their own problems with our support. Vera Songwe, United Nations under-secretary-general and executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa The most pressing issue facing the global development community today is a crisis of trust in responding to the multiple challenges of climate change, of food or fuel or fertilizer. … The divergence in the responses [to these crises] has created huge divergences and huge inequalities in many parts of the world. Seeing how we can converge in our responses to restore growth, restore more prosperity into the global economy, is one of the biggest challenges we face. One key step that needs to be taken to overcome this challenge of trust is more inclusion — more inclusion in decision making, both at global financial institutions but also at the [Group of 20 leading rich and developing nations] and other forums where decisions are made about development financing, development focus, and the priorities that need to be put in place to restore growth and reset the global economy. The global development community is of course up for the challenges ahead because we have faced them before. Coming out of the [Second] World War, there was a lot of mistrust … But we were able to come together and create the United Nations system, we were able to come together and create the Bretton Woods system. I think those systems have performed well, but now we need to renovate, we need to innovate within those systems … we need to make them more representative of the challenges we face today. And the only way we can do that is to make them more inclusive, and more representative of the people we serve. Mark Green, former U.S. ambassador and president, director, and CEO at Wilson Center There are obviously lots of fires burning these days from Ukraine and Afghanistan and elsewhere. But what I would point to is the problem of human displacement. [There are] record levels of human displacement in every corner of the world. … The reason I point to this is, with each passing day, we're having young people being more and more disconnected from the world around them. And so, in so many ways, we're planting the seeds of future trouble. … Right now, when we look at human displacement, people naturally think of the humanitarian assistance challenges. … But I think we have to look beyond that. We have to not only deal with immediate needs … we need to be finding ways to connect those who are displaced to the world around them, and help them to be self-reliant, to develop their own path to self-reliance in the future. We want young people to be contributors in the future. And the only way that's going to happen is if we not only provide the immediate needs but start to invest in education, start to connect every displaced community with the internet … and the community around them so they can be productive citizens in the future.