By George Ingram, Jonathan Papoulidis
The U.S. Department of the Treasury has called on the World Bank to evolve in response to a confluence of global crises that are upending development progress and threatening people and planet. Treasury will soon extend this evolution mandate to other multilateral development banks (MDBs) as part of a campaign that, if successful, would not only reshape global development finance but the development paradigm itself.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen noted last month that alongside the Bank’s twin goals to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity, a focus on resilience to global challenges like climate change, pandemics, fragility, and conflict will be critical to meet the moment.
The World Bank’s evolution roadmap has affirmed the need to evolve in the face of unprecedented crises. Resilience has been put forward as one of three change factors, the others being sustainability and inclusion.
Taken together, a focus on sustainability, inclusion, and crisis management better describes the Bank’s current orientation and will not serve as the drivers of a comprehensive evolutionary process intended to build lasting resilience.
However, what counts as resilience in the…
