By Juan Fernández
Impact investing is on the rise. This is mainly fuelled by the rising public awareness on the societal and environmental impacts of investments – in both the positive and the negative sense. A 2020 report by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), estimates the size of the impact investing market between $505 billion and $2.1 trillion in managed assets. Continue reading “Social Impact Bonds: Doing real good or a wolf in a sheep’s clothing?”
Against the background of the global Corona pandemic, there is an urgent need for the EU to step up its international cooperation efforts.
By Michael Obrovsky
Reacting rather swiftly to the economic and social effects of the COVID-19 crisis, The European Council in its July 2020 meeting has agreed on the reconstruction instrument “NextGenerationEU“. The latter features a financial volume of € 750 billion to strengthen the EU budget 2021-2024 and € 1,074.3 billion for the long-term budget (MFF Multiannual Financial Framework) for the period 2021-2027. While new instruments and billions of euros are being provided for the recovery of the European economy, the EU’s international cooperation framework with the Global South is still based on a pre-COVID-19 approach. Continue reading “It’s about Europe’s future, stupid!”
By Iliana Olivié and Aitor Pérez EADI/ISS Blog Series
The economic, social and political crises that have erupted in Europe in the last decade might be shifting the academic debate on the drivers of aid from the more traditional selfish vs. solidary divide to a -somehow related- new divide on Nationalism vs. Liberalism-Cosmopolitanism. Recent examples are the Brexit process, or the rise of populist movements in Europe. Continue reading “Re-Politizing the European Aid Debate”
By Johan Bastiaensen
The urgency and profoundness of the climate crisis begs serious thought about the spending of climate related international donor and investment funds. Our research group at the Institute for Development Policy argues that these should be used to sponsor transformative pathways out of the upcoming climate crisis rather than focusing mainly on useful but ultimately insufficient band-aids to help some adapt to the worst of its consequences. Especially rural and agricultural microfinance institutions could play an important role in the transformation and restoration of the current socially distorted and ecologically disastrous agricultural model. Continue reading “Microfinance “business as usual” is not the climate action that we need”
By Dirk Jan Koch and Marloes Verholt | EADI/ISS Blog Series
REDD+, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, has been one of the holy grails of international efforts to combat climate change for the past 10 years: over 10 billion dollars have been pledged to this cause by donor countries. Although REDD+ aims to reduce deforestation rates while increasing the welfare of landowners, research has shown that it also negatively impacts indigenous communities and has contributed to conflict. While hard work has been done to improve REDD+ programs, there are serious unintended effects of this much needed climate change action program. We wondered if organizations will do something about these unintended effects and would like to stimulate debate on that. We found that there are limits to what they learn: some unintended effects are likely to persist. Continue reading “Limits to learning: when climate action contributes to social conflict.”
