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Forging a new path forward on climate change

Vipul Bhagat's picture

As world leaders convene in Doha for this year’s UN Climate Change Conference  developing countries are looking for ways to maintain momentum for change to help them transition to climate-smart growth.

When it comes to delivering improved, cost-effective infrastructure and services – a precondition for green growth – public-private partnerships (PPPs) are one way forward. At a recent event co-sponsored with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Doha, we shared our unique perspective on public sector efforts to attract and leverage private sector climate finance through PPPs.

Some key takeways from the event include:

  • PPPs help tap new money for infrastructure:  Since the 2008 financial crisis, governments have limited financial resources to devote to capital expenditures and expanded public services. Involving the private sector offers a solution.
  • PPPs boost efficiency through cost savings and shorten delivery periods. They also spur innovation by bringing in private sector know-how.
  • PPPs facilitate projects under one umbrella: When it comes to climate initiatives, PPPs can efficiently organize and consolidate the numerous and complex arrangements that make a renewable energy (or any other climate-related) project work.
  • PPPs allow for appropriate allocation of supply and risk demand to the private sector, reducing taxpayer costs.
  • Since 1989, IFC has been the only multilateral institution providing advice to national and municipal governments on designing and implementing PPP transactions to improve infrastructure and access to basic services such as water, power, agribusiness, transport, health and education.

A true PPP is all about the last P - Partnership

Ella Lazarte's picture

Private sector participation provides a promising solution to sustainable management and financing of water services, but we must bear in mind that a true PPP is all about the last P, partnership. At the Training Day preceding the PPP conference here in Dakar, Jane Jamieson said that PPP is not a date, it’s a marriage – you have to wake up next to it for the next 15-20 years (or 5 years or less for those management or lease/affermage contracts in countries such as Benin, Uganda, and Mozambique). So how do we make sure that it is indeed a true partnership? 

Cities and PPPs: I’ve got Ulaanbaatar on my mind

David Lawrence's picture
Photo courtesy of christahasenkopf.com

I recently read a quote by Edward Glaeser, an urban economist, in the latest issue of IFC’s quarterly journal on Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), which caught my attention:

Statistically, there is a near-perfect correlation between urbanization and prosperity among nations. As a country’s urban population rises by 10 percent, the country’s per capita output increases by 30 percent.

The problem with rural transport is that it is rural, the solution is in branding

A major constraint with developing and maintaining rural roads is the fact that they are, unfortunately, rural. The areas where they are needed are often difficult to access, logistics become complicated, local contracting capability is limited, engineers are few and far between, and younger engineers especially, are not keen to leave the urban environment.

Managing garbage to save the planet

David Lawrence's picture

The plight of refugees is in the news all the time, mostly as a result of war. But recently, I saw a post in Dot Earth, a New York Times blog, about a documentary called Climate Refugees. It suggests that climate change will lead to massive refugee problems, mainly as a result of flooding. Disasters in New Orleans, Bangladesh and Myanmar offer a glimpse of what might come.

What Does Adam Smith’s Linen Shirt Have to do with Global Poverty?

Martin Ravallion's picture

In his Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations Adam Smith pointed to the social-inclusion role of a linen shirt in 18th century Europe:

“A linen shirt … is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. Adam Smith. Photo: Istockphoto.comThe Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct.”

This passage has often been used to justify the view that poverty is not absolute but relative—that certain socially-specific expenditures are essential for social inclusion, on top of basic needs for nutrition and physical survival.

The way this idea is implemented in practice is to set a “relative poverty line” that is a constant proportion of average income for the country and date in question. That is how poverty is measured in most of Western Europe. By contrast, poverty measures in developing countries have almost invariably used absolute lines, which aim to have a fixed real value over time. The World Bank’s international “$1 a day” poverty lines also aim to be absolute lines across countries, using purchasing power parities from the International Comparison Program.

Featured Tools: Toolkit for Public-Private Partnerships in Roads & Highways

Anna Barbone's picture

The Toolkit for Public-Private Partnerships in Roads and Highways is intended to be a key reference guide for public authorities in developing countries for the development of their PPP programs in the highways sector. However, much information on the subject is readily available, notably through the internet, and the Toolkit has not vocation nor pretends to be a unique reference on the subject.

New global poverty estimates confirm China’s leading role in meeting MDGs

David Dollar's picture

The international community has endorsed the Millenium Development Goal of reducing the poverty rate in the developing world by 50% over the 25 years, 1990-2015.  While the target is arbitrary, it is nonetheless important to have a stretch goal like this to challenge us all to make the world a better place.  To measure progress, naturally we need pretty good estimates of global poverty.  The World Bank is the leading bean counter in this exercise.  It just today released new estimates of global poverty that have the potential to illuminate the progress, but also the potential to confuse a lot of people.  The research department of the World Bank has changed its global poverty line from $1 per day to $1.25 per day and has found about 468 million more poor people than it had previously estimated.  About 135 million of these newly found poor are in China.  How does one make sense of these new numbers?  Here are some pointers: