Online Media Briefing Center (OMBC) news for accredited journalists
Highlights
The developing world faces hunger, poverty, unsustainable debt, and learning poverty above 70%. Climate change makes all of these burdens worse. Farmers face droughts and floods. In poor countries, they face severe shortages of fertilizer and diesel. Underinvestment blocks access to electricity and clean water. Current global macro policies create a permanent drain on global capital, risking a long recession.
Thank you, President Widodo and Minister Sri Mulyani for your leadership and Dr. Tedros for your coordination on this initiative. I’m now on my way to Bali and I look forward to seeing you soon. It’s great that today we are formally presenting “The Pandemic Fund.” We meet at a time of multiple crises – climate change, food, fuel, inflation, debt, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The crisis facing development is intensifying. Looking ahead, the Bretton Woods Institutions will need to consider their roles, governance, and capital structure, and evolve to address climate change and global public goods.
The world is unlikely to meet the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 absent history-defying rates of economic growth over the remainder of this decade, according to a new World Bank study. The study finds that COVID-19 dealt the biggest setback to global poverty-reduction efforts since 1990 and the war in Ukraine threatens to make matters worse.
This conversation on the role of regional interconnections in integrating renewable energy at scale is critical in ensuring that the energy transition happens with the right balance of dependable supply, affordability, and environmental sustainability.
We have dramatically grown our financing to address climate disasters such as the flooding in Pakistan. And we have dramatically grown our climate finance. Including on major commitments to adaptation, we reached $32 billion in climate finance this past year, a record that was above our Glasgow target. I welcome and solicit your input on ways to increase our resources and commitment capacity. We are approaching the climate crisis with action and impact.
The shrinking value of the currencies of most developing economies is driving up food and fuel prices in ways that could deepen the food and energy crises that many of them already face, according to the World Bank’s latest Commodity Markets Outlook report.
To combat the crises, the World Bank Group responded with unprecedented urgency, scale, and impact, deploying a record $115 billion in financing in FY22.
