Gallagher Co-Authors Article on Green Finance in Latin America
Kevin Gallagher, Director of the Global Development Policy (GDP) Center and Professor of Global Development Policy at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, recently co-authored an article on development banks and climate financing in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in Ecological Economics with a correlating interactive database.
The article, entitled “Greening Development Lending in the Americas: Trends and Determinants,” was published in Ecological Economics and written by Gallagher and GDP Center Researcher Fei Yuan. Access the free article here until Saturday, November 17, 2018.
Latin America and the Caribbean currently face a $110 billion-dollar annual gap in financing for climate change, and this paper shows that development banks operating in the Americas are falling far short of playing the key role they need to assume in filling these gaps.
According to estimates made by the authors, development banks provide just $7 billion per year in terms of green finance in general, and climate finance in particular is just $4.4 billion per year.
A corresponding econometric analysis shows green financial flows tend to go to countries with higher human development scores and left of center governments, and derive from development banks where the majority of the shareholder governments have strong environmental performance in their home country.
Gallagher currently serves as co-chair of the T-20 Argentina task force on “An International Financial Architecture for Stability and Development” to advise the G-20 and its members on financial infrastructure and monetary policy globally. He also served on the U.S. Department of State’s Investment Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy and the International Investment Division of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. He has served as a visiting or adjunct professor at the Paul Nitze School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University; El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico; Tsinghua University in China; and the Center for State and Society in Argentina. You can follow him on Twitter @KevinPGallagher.