Sustainable Growth Newswire
EPF compiles a selection of policy oriented-research from around the globe pertaining to its policy initiatives. To receive a weekly email of the newswire, please subscribe to our newsletter
Innovation Outlook: Smart charging for electric vehicles
Electric vehicles (EVs) hold the key to unleash synergies between clean transport and low-carbon electricity. Just as future transport must be increasingly electrified, future power systems must make maximum use of variable renewable energy sources. Smart charging for EVs minimises their load impact and unlocks the flexibility to use more solar and wind power. This outlook from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) shows how policy and technological breakthroughs can advance the development of this key enabling technology for renewables.…
From theory to practice: Perspectives on Climate-Smart agriculture in India and Africa
As global food production faces the negative consequences of climate change, best practices in climate-smart agriculture (CSA) must be promoted to achieve food security. This requires adequate financial and human resources to be channeled to the upscaling of CSA activities in high-impact, priority areas. Considering India and Africa’s complementary sectoral priorities and their similar roles in evolving global food markets, various opportunities exist for their collaboration in the agricultural sector. The two regions can share expertise in areas of technology…
Gender Equality, Infrastructure and PPPs
The World Bank Group prepared this primer as an important first step toward gender equality in PPP projects. The primer consolidates and draws from a wide spectrum of examples that cut across sectors to demonstrate how infrastructure, its development, and the policies and regulations governing its construction and operation, can play a role in closing gaps between women and men. It pinpoints approaches for ensuring that projects not only do no harm, but also serve as vehicles for empowerment, providing…
Greening Construction: The Role of Carbon Pricing
Putting a price on carbon can be an effective way for governments and organizations across sectors to effectively alter behavior in favor of lower-carbon choices. The construction value chain is a complex, highly fragmented mix of life-cycle stages, delivery models, and stakeholders, with few incentives to consider climate change impacts. Carbon pricing is yet to achieve its potential when it comes to driving behavior change in construction. This study explores how carbon pricing mechanisms can be designed better to more…
Data Collaboration for the Common Good: Enabling Trust and Innovation Through Public-Private Partnerships
This report, done in collaboration with McKinsey and Company, represents a year-long effort with business, government, civil society leaders, experts and practitioners to advance public-private data collaboration to address some of the world’s most pressing humanitarian and sustainable development challenges. The report provides a holistic governance framework designed to strengthen trust, balance competing interests and deliver impact. It offers insights to balance both the need to innovate in the use of data and the mandate to protect vulnerable populations against…
Latin America’s missing middle: Rebooting inclusive growth
The report focuses mainly on Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, and examines two “missing middles” holding the region back: a robust cohort of midsize companies and a solid middle class with growing spending power. The two are connected: expanding the pool of modern, competitive firms can create better paying jobs, and lift middle-class demand needed for new investment. The disruption presented by adoption of digital technologies provides an opportunity to reignite this virtuous cycle of growth—but it will require reforms to help…
Employment Situation in Latin America and the Caribbean. The future of work in Latin America and the Caribbean: old and new forms of employment and challenges for labour regulation
This twentieth issue of the joint ECLAC/ILO report analyses a specific issue that is extremely relevant to the relationship between new technologies and decent work. Digital platforms create new job opportunities both locally and in global digital markets. However, these new forms of work are often performed outside existing regulations, denying these workers legally established labour and social rights. A key question is this regard is whether these new forms of work are a new form of wage employment or…
Financing development in Latin America and the Caribbean: The role and perspectives of multilateral development banks
This paper analyses the role that Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) have played in financing development in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and what their role will be in support of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In a context where multilateralism is severely questioned, donor countries are moving their resources away from middle-income countries, and MDBs' lending represents a decreasing share of total debt in the region, we show that there is room for MDBs to continue being relevant players.…