Center for Global Development
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
|
|---|---|
| Abbreviation | CGD |
| Motto | Independent research and practical ideas for global prosperity. |
| Formation | 2001 |
| Type | Think Tank |
| Headquarters | 1800 Massachusetts Avenue NW |
| Location | Washington, D.C. |
| President | Nancy Birdsall |
| Website | www.cgdev.org |
The Center for Global Development (CGD) is a not-for-profit think tank based in Washington, D.C. that focuses on international development. It was founded in November 2001 by former senior US official Edward W. Scott, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, C. Fred Bergsten, and Nancy Birdsall. Birdsall, the former Vice President of the Inter-American Development Bank and the former Director of the Policy Research Department at the World Bank, became the Center's first President.
CGD's stated mission is "to reduce global poverty and inequality by encouraging policy change in the U.S. and other rich countries through rigorous research and active engagement with the policy community.[1] Recently, Foreign Policy Magazine's Think-Tank Index listed CGD as one of the top 15 think-tanks in the US.[2] The Center considers itself to be a 'think and do' tank, with an emphasis on producing research that is channeled into practical policy proposals.
CGD is responsible for a number of products, including:
- The Commitment to Development Index, an annual rating of rich countries ranked by how much they help poor countries
- Forest Monitoring for Action (FORMA) [1], an online map-based tool for monitoring the progression of deforestation in tropical countries.
- Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA), a searchable database of carbon emissions of power plants and power companies
- Global Development Matters, a website that 'engages US citizens and leaders in examining how rich world policies affect global poverty reduction'.
Contents |
[edit] Research Topics
CGD conducts research on a wide range of topics related to how policies in rich countries affect the developing world.
The Center for Global Development focuses on the development policies of rich countries as they relate to the developing world. We also extend our focus beyond rich-world capitals to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of these policies in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe-Russia, and Latin America.
Much of the discussion on development is about foreign aid. Quality of aid, however, is every bit as important as quantity. CGD senior fellow The Center conducts research to analyze of current foreign development assistance programs and proposals for innovation in aid delivery.
Capital Flows/Financial Crises
CGD examines the impacts of financial regulations on capital account volatility, as well as mechanisms to further domestic financial deepening in emerging markets to prevent instability and enable growth. The Center’s research also deals with approaches to crisis resolution and the potential of foreign direct investment to promote growth.
CGD research on debt relief is shaping the debate with concrete proposals for accelerated debt relief, including recent work on restructuring Nigerian debt, mobilizing IMF gold to finance debt relief, and replacing loans with grants to allow poor countries to break out of the poverty trap.
From climate change, to sustainable development, to natural disasters like the 2004 tsunami, environmental factors have a significant impact on the fortunes of rich and poor countries alike. CGD research looks at the economic, political, and security implications of these environmental factors, and offers pragmatic policy solutions to meet these challenges.
The Center has committed itself to improving our understanding of the relationship between development and economic growth. Though growth is a necessary condition for development, not all growth benefits the poor. Non-resident fellow Peter Timmer leads CGD research which explores strategies for ensuring that economic growth is “pro-poor,” and that agencies such as the Millennium Challenge Account encourage growth that benefits all economic sectors.
Recognizing that education is a lynchpin of development - and the focus of much development assistance - the Center for Global Development investigates promising new approaches for rich countries to help improve education outcomes in developing countries. A focus of research by Senior Fellow Maureen Lewis, Nancy Birdsall, and others is the beneficial effects that educating girls can have on health and social development, as well as economic growth.
CGD recognizes that strong institutions that set the context for effective governance are key to generating development, and our research in this area focuses on how rich world policies can be better targeted towards strengthening governance systems in developing countries, through avenues of intervention such as foreign aid and trade policy.
International Financial Institutions
CGD research examines ways the IFI’s - the IMF, World Bank, Multilateral Development Banks (MDB’s), and other large development agencies - can become more responsive to the needs of developing countries, can better understand the impact of their work, and can ensure that growth better reaches the country’s poor.
Financial services—savings, credit, insurance, money transfer—are vital yet intangible economic infrastructure. On an individual scale, financial services help people manage some of life’s great challenges: investing in education, softening the financial trauma of illness and death, attaining ownership of a safe home. On a macro scale, they channel investment and diversify away risk.
The role of agriculture in promoting pro-poor growth is attracting renewed attention. CGD’s work focuses on how rich countries' agricultural policies and practices impact poor people in the developing world.
CGD trade research focuses on how rich country trade policies could be more supportive of poverty reduction and economic growth in developing economies. We also work to rebuild a foundation for broad support of open trade policies in key developed and emerging markets.
CGD work on global health aims to improve the effectiveness of policies and actions of donors (bilateral aid agencies, philanthropic foundations, and multilateral organizations) and to enhance the coordination between these public agents and the private sector.
The globalization of markets can and has brought mutual benefits to both the rich and the poor. Yet there is contention over how these benefits are divided, and there is an increasing recognition that global markets require good global politics. CGD believes that good global politics are critical to the battle against global poverty and unrealized human development, and to a more just and fair as well as a more stable and prosperous global economy. CGD President Nancy Birdsall leads the center's work on the politics and economics of globalization.
The Center is committed to reducing inequality: the enormous – and growing – gaps between the richest and poorest countries. CGD work in areas including global public health, aid effectiveness, foreign direct investment, trade, migration, and other areas, contribute to reducing poverty and inequality.
People have always migrated to improve their lives. Today, movements from developing countries to other parts of the world are of intense interest to many policymakers. While most of the rich world migration debate focuses on how migrants affect the places they arrive in, CGD conducts rigorous, independent research to examine the effects on migrants and their places of origin. CGD research fellow Michael Clemens leads this research.
Population is central to development in the 21st century as developing countries grapple with mirror images: the longstanding challenge of reducing poverty in fast-growing sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and the increasingly common dominance of aging populations in East and Central Asia. CGD's research and policy work on population examines this range of issues.
Finding ways to reduce the poverty that afflicts more than half the world’s people is a core part of CGD’s mission. But understanding the causes, and cures, for poverty alone is not enough. It would only be a partial victory if poor countries succeeded in improving their living standards, only to fall farther behind the world’s wealthiest nations. The Center is therefore committed to reducing inequality: the enormous – and growing – gaps between the richest and poorest countries. CGD work in areas including global public health, aid effectiveness, foreign direct investment, trade, migration, and other areas, contributes to reducing poverty and inequality.
This page highlights CGD research on private investment, innovations in development finance, and privatization. It also includes work analyzing programs designed to encourage entrepreneurship and policies that affect the quantity and quality of capital flows to low-income countries.
Understanding the linkages between security and development has become urgent in a world where terrorism, weak state capacity, public health crises, and economic contagion can cross borders with ease. Stewart Patrick heads CGD’s work on security and development, building on our 2004 Commission on Weak States and US National Security, and its publication, On the Brink.
Data is critical to the work done by the Center. On this page you will find data compiled by CGD experts for their research, as well links to other sources of development data.
[edit] Initiatives
Proposals for specific, practical improvements in rich country policies are organized into Initiatives.
CGD staff are proposing a "cash on delivery" approach to aid, under which donors would pay for measurable progress on specific outcomes pre-agreed with recipient governments. In education, donors could pilot “cash on delivery” aid by offering a contract to poor countries for $100 per additional child completing a quality primary education, to be used as the country chooses. The approach is also being explored for application by governments to their own transfers to states or districts.
This initiative, led by CGD senior fellow David Wheeler, builds on work by William Cline, a senior fellow jointly at CGD and the Peterson Institute. Cline’s book, Global Warming and Agriculture: Impact Estimates by Country (CGD, 2007), provides the first worldwide, country-level estimates of the agricultural impact of climate change through 2080. His findings starkly reveal the stakes for developing countries and highlight the need to reduce carbon emissions, as well as preparing for the impacts that past emissions have made inevitable.
Billions of dollars in aid are flowing to developing countries to confront HIV/AIDS but relatively little is known yet about the effectiveness of this aid. The HIV/AIDS Monitor is designed to help fill this knowledge gap by tracking and analyzing key features of the way aid for HIV/AIDS is allocated and disbursed, while identifying lessons relevant to broader questions about the effectiveness of development assistance.
The Scott Family Fellows program aims to recruit and support young professionals to help address the severe capacity gap existing at the sub-Ministerial level in Liberia from 14 years of brutal civil war where many civil service workers were either killed or fled the country. Each year, for three years, five to six young professionals will work in Liberia as “special assistants” to senior Liberian government officials, primarily Cabinet members. This program is funded by a generous grant from the family of Edward W. Scott, Jr.
Supporting Liberia's Reconstruction and Development
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's inauguration as the President of Liberia in January 2006 marked a watershed in that country's tumultuous history. Twenty-five years of corruption, misrule and civil war under Samuel Doe, Charles Taylor and successive interim governments had left the country in complete ruins. President Sirleaf, the first African woman to be elected head of state, has energetically set the country on a new course, putting accountability, transparency, good governance, and economic opportunities for all Liberians at the center of her agenda.
Other initiatives include Engaging Fragile States, Drug Resistance & Global Health, the Commitment to Development Award, and The Future of the World Bank.[3]
[edit] Publications
CGD's publications take the forms of books, briefs, working papers, essays, and reports[2]. Additionally, CGD maintains several blogs, including Views From the Center and the Global Health Policy blog.
Notable publications include The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President,[3], edited by CGD President Nancy Birdsall.
