With development budgets falling around the world, people have started talking about hard choices. Before the COP30 climate conference, philanthropist Bill Gates published an essay about the tradeoffs between funding climate and funding anti-poverty work — but for Ani Dasgupta, president of World Resources Institute, it’s not either-or.
“I don’t find it very helpful to pitch development versus climate,” he told Devex Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar during a recent Devex pro briefing, “Because my own personal work is all about that you cannot do one or the other.”
Dasgupta said Gates’ memo was more nuanced than much of the commentary about it would attest, but said that over time, his own view on this has shifted.