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    • Devex Newswire

    Devex Newswire: At UNOPS, an ambitious impact-investing initiative gone wrong

    In today's edition: an exclusive take on UNOPS' S3i scheme investigation by the U.N. OIOS; funders neglect territorial waters; and Jack Dorsey's NFT tweet goes for another round of resale.

    By Shabtai Gold // 18 April 2022
    Sign up to Devex Newswire today.

    It’s going to be a busy week in Washington, with the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings kicking off today.

    But first, we have a story on a massive U.N. affordable housing scheme that went wrong, and I’ll leave you with an update on the charitable world of NFTs.

    This is a preview of Newswire
    Sign up to this newsletter for an inside look at the biggest stories in global development, in your inbox daily.

    A Singapore-based contractor received tens of millions of dollars from the United Nations Office for Project Services to build more than 1 million affordable homes in six countries despite having no experience in delivering projects of this size or scope. It was part of an ambitious UNOPS impact-investing initiative called Sustainable Investments in Infrastructure and Innovation, or S3i, that was also supposed to build wind farms.

    Now the entire housing project is stalled, UNOPS is owed tens of millions of dollars, and no houses have been built, Ilya Gridneff reports for Devex.

    The U.N. is investigating S3i’s chief executive Vitaly Vanshelboim, who has been placed on administrative leave, for “possible misconduct.” Also coming under scrutiny, but not under investigation, is UNOPS Executive Director Grete Faremo, who recently announced she is retiring, though a senior U.N. official told Devex she was asked to resign. One former UNOPS official described the agency’s senior leadership team as “a corrupt cabal that is only interested in money.”

    During Ilya’s investigation, the Finnish government, a backer of S3i, suspended its funding while the U.N. investigation was being conducted. And over the weekend, UNOPS released a statement responding to Devex’s story, saying it “takes all allegations of wrongdoing extremely seriously” and will take “appropriate disciplinary and corrective actions” if any allegations are confirmed. “S3i funds are at risk, but to date, no funds have been lost, and UNOPS will pursue all available legal remedies to protect its operations and assets,” it added. 

    One more tidbit: The U.N. is also investigating a multimillion dollar payment from UNOPS to the then- 22-year-old daughter of the housing contractor so she could create an interactive project to teach millennials about ocean conservation.

    Exclusive: What went wrong with UNOPS’ ambitious impact-investing initiative? 

    Sea change

    Speaking of oceans, the international community is neglecting the part of the ocean that provides the greatest natural resources for people. That’s according to Rocky Tirona at Rare, a conservation nonprofit. My colleague Catherine Cheney reports that only 4% to 12% of ocean philanthropy goes toward territorial waters — the waters over which sovereign states have jurisdiction —  despite it containing all the world’s mangroves, seagrasses, and kelp forests, and most of its coral reefs.

    One of the ways that Tirona’s organization works is by helping local communities set up managed access areas where local fishers get exclusive access to the fish, giving them an incentive to protect the waters. “Behavior change is a really critical part of this work,” she said. “If community members come up with the rules, they’re more likely to follow them.” She was speaking at last week’s Our Ocean conference in Palau, which closed with commitments worth $16.35 billion to protect the ocean — but not much went to territorial waters.

    Read: How to protect, and why to prioritize, coastal waters

    + Devex Pro subscribers can read our analysis of the top ocean donors and trends in marine development funding. Not yet a Pro subscriber? Sign up now and start your 15-day free trial.

    Double whammy

    The World Bank is warning that the dual shocks of COVID-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine will mean up to 95 million additional people will live in extreme poverty compared to pre-pandemic projections. Effectively, progress on fighting poverty has taken the biggest hits this century. Rising inflation will only make this worse, because the poorest people spend the largest share of their money on food. And governments are in a weak position to help, because their fiscal space has been depleted by the pandemic.

    As I was told last week: There are “a whole range of crises all coming together,” with less diplomatic language used in some corners.

    ICYMI: We wrote a breakdown of the seven issues we’re watching as the 2022 Spring Meetings kick off.

    Jack is back

    Who says you can’t have a second chance? An effort to resell an NFT of the world’s first tweet by Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, recently flopped after failing to get a bid over $280. It was a far cry from the roughly $48 million Sina Estavi, CEO at Malaysian blockchain company Bridge Oracle, was seeking.

    Now, Estavi is making a fresh auction and pledging to give 50% of the proceeds to cash transfer nonprofit GiveDirectly. Dorsey chided Estavi, who had purchased the NFT from him originally, for not being more generous. “Why not 99% of it?” he asked. The Twitter founder sold the NFT for $2.9 million last year and gave all the proceeds to GiveDirectly. The charity says the cash was distributed to 16,467 households in Malawi and Rwanda.

    Given the tumultuous auctioneering going on, GiveDirectly is not counting any chickens before they go from virtual to real. “It’s a fun rollercoaster to watch,” spokesperson Tyler Hall tells my colleague Stephanie Beasley. “We hope that however it wraps up, we’re able to reach people in poverty with specific amounts of the money.” The highest bid has reached just a few hundred dollars short of $30,000 as of the send time of this newsletter.

    Out of alignment

    Ethiopia was elected to the executive board of the World Food Programme last week. But at the U.N.’s 10th Economic and Social Council Plenary Meeting, the U.S. “expressed reservations about Ethiopia's election...stating that its values are not in alignment with the Programme's mandate.”

    ICYMI: European Commission says World Bank’s $300M grant to Ethiopia is premature

    + Track how business, social enterprise, and development finance leaders are tackling global challenges by signing up for Devex Invested — our free, must-read Tuesday newsletter.

    In other news

    Dozens still missing as South Africa floods death toll rises to 443. [Reuters]

    Sri Lanka is on the brink. Years of errors, hubris, the pandemic, and Ukraine led here. [Foreign Affairs]

    An ‘unfortunate wording’ in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent report led to a misinterpretation of a key finding on global greenhouse gas emissions. [BBC]

    Stephanie Beasley contributed to this edition.

    Sign up to Newswire for an inside look at the biggest stories in global development.

    • Funding
    • Environment & Natural Resources
    • Democracy, Human Rights & Governance
    • UNOPS
    • IMF
    • World Bank
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    About the author

    • Shabtai Gold

      Shabtai Gold

      Shabtai Gold is a Senior Reporter based in Washington. He covers multilateral development banks, with a focus on the World Bank, along with trends in development finance. Prior to Devex, he worked for the German Press Agency, dpa, for more than a decade, with stints in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, before relocating to Washington to cover politics and business.

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