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You heard it here first: The Asian Development Bank is shaking things up in a major overhaul to streamline its lending and work more closely with clients on the ground.
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Also in today’s edition: Philanthropic generosity seems to have its limits when it comes to climate change, and digital diplomacy leaves out lower-income nations that could be most affected by the promise and perils of big tech.
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My colleague Shabtai Gold was the first to report that the Asian Development Bank is embarking on a major reform effort starting in 2023.
One element of the overhaul is to streamline lending from five regional departments to act as a single financing window. Another part is to decentralize power by deploying staff to borrowing countries so they have eyes and ears on the ground, where bank clients actually are, as opposed to concentrating decision-making in Manila, where the bank is headquartered.
ADB Managing Director General Woochong Um, in an email to Devex, said that the restructuring will make the bank more responsive to clients and better able to mobilize new private investments. Um also said that fighting climate change would be a cornerstone of the strategy.
The move comes amid the fierce power struggle in the region, where the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is not only expanding, but also potentially trying to rival the World Bank. It remains to be seen where ADB stands in this battle of the banks.
It also remains to be seen where its 3,500 employees will land. The shake-up could mean moving staff from the bank’s headquarters and five regional departments into the field.
Even top brass aren’t immune to change. Some vice presidents will be getting different titles.
Read more: Asian Development Bank undertakes major overhaul to streamline lending
My colleague Colum Lynch has been diligently reporting on the ins and outs and ups and downs of the U.N.-brokered deal between Russia and Ukraine to ship desperately needed grain out of Ukrainian ports.
Looks like things are at a low point again.
Over the weekend, Russia announced it was suspending its participation in the deal in response to what it said were “massive air and sea strikes using drones” on its Black Sea Fleet ships, infrastructure, and naval base in Sevastopol.
The Black Sea Grain Initiative was credited with taming food prices around the world. According to U.N. estimates, the agreement has indirectly prevented some 100 million people from falling into extreme poverty.
On Sunday, U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said in a statement that Secretary-General António Guterres was delaying a trip to the Arab League Summit in Algiers by a day to focus on the issue.
ICYMI: Fertilizer diplomacy — how ammonia could hobble Black Sea grain deal
Worldwide, philanthropic contributions to help mitigate the increasingly devastating effects of climate change grew by 25% from 2020 to 2021. That sounds impressive, except when you consider that total philanthropic giving around the world last year topped $810 billion — meaning a mere 2% of that went to climate change mitigation.
It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that philanthropy is going to be a big player in the fight against climate change.
But my colleague Stephanie Beasley digs into the numbers, produced by the ClimateWorks Foundation, to find a more nuanced picture.
Since the Paris Agreement, philanthropic foundation funding for climate change mitigation more than tripled between 2015 and 2021, while the number of grantees receiving climate change mitigation funding nearly doubled from 1,400 to 2,775.
“The nice silver lining that we saw was the big jump in philanthropic giving that happened last year relative to what we saw in 2020,” Surabi Menon, vice president of global intelligence at the ClimateWorks Foundation, tells Stephanie.
The nonprofit’s president and CEO, Helen Mountford, said in a statement that philanthropy needs to “break through the 2% funding barrier” to “give people and the planet a fighting chance.”
Read: Climate philanthropy — small gains, big hopes, but reality still bleak
Learn more with our Road to COP 27 series, which offers a 360-degree view of what’s being done — and not being done — to reach the elusive net-zero target.
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Tech giants such as Meta and Google are worth more than the gross domestic product of some nations. So it’s little surprise that governments are sending diplomats to Silicon Valley to represent their interests there. The European Union even recently opened an embassy in San Francisco.
Lower-income nations have been largely left out of the burgeoning realm of tech diplomacy, although some are catching up, my colleague Catherine Cheney reports.
Pakistan, for example, is engaging with its diaspora in Silicon Valley to bridge the divide between technology development and policymaking. The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change is working with the Senegalese government, which is considering appointing a digital ambassador.
As big tech continues to dominate our lives and reshape our societies, lower-income nations often have the most to gain or lose in the evolution of advancements such as surveillance and artificial intelligence.
Patricia Gruver, tech policy manager at the nonprofit Meridian International Center, tells Catherine that everyone needs to be included in the digital revolution “to safeguard responsible policies and regulations that support democratic values, human rights, and ensure a safe technological future for all.”
Read: Why more lower-income nations are engaging in tech diplomacy
A cholera outbreak in flood-ravaged Nigeria poses a serious threat to internally displaced children and reports estimate that one million people are at risk of contracting the disease. [Reuters]
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak could extend the foreign aid budget cut by another two years, while development experts say more of the country's foreign aid is being spent domestically than overseas. [The Telegraph and BBC]
World Health Organization officials report that essential medical supplies have run out in Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region, while malaria cases have increased by 80% since last year. [Al Jazeera]
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