Inside the World Bank and IDB's plan to increase collaboration

The World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank recently signed a memorandum of understanding to deepen cooperation in the areas of preserving the Amazon rainforest, Caribbean disaster resilience, and increasing digital access across Latin America. Devex Managing Editor Anna Gawel talked with IDB President Ilan Goldfajn at the Clinton Global Initiative on the sidelines of the 78th United Nations General Assembly in New York to get the details. Why partner with the World Bank, and why focus on just three areas? With the World Bank, it is essential that we partner in Latin America and the Caribbean, but to partner doesn't mean that you're going to do everything. Because when you say you're going to do everything, you don't do anything, you just do nothing, you’re just too dispersed. Why three? Because those are the ones we believe we can do. Why so specific? Because we want to implement … we need to show action, we need to show results. In your inaugural speech at the start of the year, you outlined three priorities for the bank: climate and sustainable growth, poverty and inequality reduction, and slow internet speeds. It’s been nine months. Where do you stand on those priorities? So it's incredible that nine months has passed. And we are still in the same direction. We are in a sort of strategy effort because it’s one thing is to have an inauguration speech, when you basically align where you want to go. The other thing is to have a strategy, a group strategy, with staff, with all the teams, with the board, with all the stakeholders — we’re all together aligned. It’s incredible that in nine months, we are still going in that direction. Climate change is one of the main issues in terms of World Bank reforms, and there has been this enormous debate about potential tradeoffs in focusing the bank on climate change versus poverty alleviation. Renewable energy projects have high upfront costs and they don’t always have an immediate impact. What would you say to a government official, let’s say in sub-Saharan Africa, whose constituency doesn’t have electricity 80% of the day? How would you convince this that climate change initiatives are the way forward? We need to think about where we press our priorities in each country. So for example … in the Caribbean we decided to focus on resilience and adaptation. In South America, we are pressing in terms of conserving the Amazon. The same objective but different emphases. In terms of these reforms that are being discussed on the World Bank level, balance sheet optimization and so forth, how do these apply to IDB? We need to think about the reforms as has the reform of the MDBs. Of course, the bank is the largest MDB, but the regional developments are part of the system, and we need to work them together. When we partner with the World Bank, we are saying we are together. When we think about reforms, we think about the whole group of force. So when I just mentioned implementation, it sounds like development effectiveness, it sounds like impact. And to have impact, you have to have standards, you have to have a way of measuring the same thing. So all of this is part of an agenda. That is an agenda of the whole system, not only of the World Bank. So many people talk about the “billions to trillions” agenda. Having you and Ajay Banga come from the private sector, what role will that play in helping to catalyze private sector investment? We bring a new energy, we bring a new perspective. We’re thinking about financial innovations in order to scale things. If you do project by project, it’s too slow … so you have to have specific contracts that you can do for specific risks, but you cannot have too many, because if you have too many, you won’t get there. The SDG summit is this week, and SDGs are woefully behind. What do you hope to see concretely after this U.N. General Assembly? I think we are getting more concrete. I think we are getting more into implementation. Sometimes it's not in the timing that people want … but I think we are getting the sense from everybody — from governments to private sector to NGOs — that there is time sensitivity here. And I think we're getting into the deadline because people say let's accelerate, let's concentrate, let's do more implementable things. So that’s my sense coming out of here. Does this mean that everything will be fine and suddenly we are going to change a revolution? No, but I think we are going to run a little bit faster now.