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Post-apartheid, the South African economy remains characterised by persistent unemployment and world-leading inequality. Transitioning towards more equal and inclusive economic outcomes is hampered by an industrial base concentrated in powerful firms in upstream resource-based carbon-intensive sectors. Pursuing industrialisation in the context of the push towards decarbonisation and sustainability by significant trading partners depends on a massive investment programme in renewable energy and specific high-emitting sectors and developing linkages between sectors to target a just, equitable, and inclusive transition that tackles the country’s deep-rooted inequalities. This paper evaluates South Africa’s main development finance institution, the Industrial Development Corporation’s role in green industrialisation in South Africa. It investigates whether the investments made and the orientation of the IDC positively impacts the structural transformation of the economy, using disclosed and publicly available data. It suggests a set of criteria with which the IDC can assess the transformational impacts of its climate change funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The financialization of development and the outsourcing of aid work to contracted businesses are strengthening the role of alternative drivers among practitioners engaged in international development work. These relate to but also transcend the dichotomy between altruism and personal self-interest, which often frames scholarly research on aid worker motivations. Focusing on consultants and development finance experts, this article highlights three institutional impetuses that guide practitioners' work. They are concerned with the international competitiveness of donor operations, the stakes of one's employer in cross-sectoral partnerships and the reputation and position of one's professional sub-field. Consultants and development finance experts also highlight considerable staff movements across non- and for-profit institutions. In the increasingly complex architecture of aid interventions, such boundary-crossers operate in a new space of development brokerage, as mediators between public and private sector actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the financial importance of development banks across regions and income groups. We construct a global banking dataset for the period 1995 to 2021 and analyse the distribution of development banking assets across macro regions and country income groups. We create a composite global and national Development Bank Financial Importance index (DBFI index) that enables us to rank the most financially important development banks across the globe. Development banks play significant and diverse roles in the global financial system, but their financial importance varies across regions and income groups. The paper offers a broad analysis of the global development banking landscape and advances the area of research further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite past debt relief initiatives, the external debt of Africa is rising again, and it has some new worrying features: diminishing concessionality and a rising private creditor. Sub-Saharan African countries devote a significant portion of their fiscal resources to service the debt, and this prevents them from increasing development expenditures (generally imports of strategic goods that can't be produced domestically). By adding a human development factor to the Geometry of Debt Sustainability model (GDS) (Vaggi and Prizzon 2014) and following the analytical framework of Pasinetti (1998), we assess how external debt sustainability changes when countries increase the foreign currency purchasing of health and education goods and services. Not only these types of human development expenditures are central to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but they have become even more important due to impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on many low income countries (LICs). We evaluate external debt sustainability in two African contexts: Kenya and a composite country, called Ubuntu, which is representative of Sub-Saharan Africa average indebtedness conditions. The results confirm the existence of a trade-off between debt service and human development expenditures. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, the Sub-Saharan African countries were on unsustainable debt trajectories as the debt-to-GDP ratios would stabilize only at extremely high values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A transition to clean fuels and technology for cooking is increasingly recognised as a cornerstone of sustainable development. However, sufficient, appropriate, affordable finance to support the transition is lacking. Grounded in primary data collection via expert interviews, this study's research objective was to critically assess development finance institutions' (DFIs) delivery of climate and development finance to address cooking poverty. Interview findings underscore DFIs' important role in the transition, including to create the ecosystem conditions conducive to sustained investment. However, as a group they are not demonstrating the risk appetite and financial solutions that clean cooking markets need. Nor are they operating with the agility and flexibility required for rapid scale-up. Consequently, DFIs are not optimally fulfilling their mandates to create additionality and mobilise private capital in these markets. Interviewees call for DFIs to reconsider their approach, and we rely on these findings to posit a theory of change for clean cooking finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As of today, China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) continues showing signs of its transition towards green development; whilst the Thai sustainable tourism industry is encountering substantial environmental problems of unfavourable water quality and waste management outcomes. This paper dissects how China has been transitioning into the practice of a greener BRI, as well as how Thailand has benefitted from its greener BRI partnership with China in recent years. This paper delineates the major environmental issues faced by Thailand, in order to suggest why Thailand needs to urgently and responsively address any notable environmental concern for long-term economic growth and sustainability. There is a lack, if not an absence, of existing studies that analyse Sino-Thai green BRI partnerships with the presentation of supporting, updated data and statistics. The findings presented in this paper respond to such a research gap. This paper concludes by arguing that should China's distribution of development finance to Thailand be able to enhance the latter's environmental health and landscape, more Southeast Asian (SEA) and global emerging powers may develop an increasing interest in forming or strengthening green BRI partnerships with China. In the long run, such an optimistic outcome allows China's diplomatic influence to grow further. China's greener development finance plan is an ambitious, globally impactful strategy. Such an ambitious strategy aims to capitalise on the opportunities to address countries' developmental and environmental needs to boost China's global competence and image, in addition to elevating its diplomatic influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's impressive economic expansion and growing global impact have fundamentally transformed the worldwide financial environment, posing a challenge to the longstanding dominance of Western-led institutions such as the World Bank (WB), Asian Development Bank (ADB), and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in the field of development finance. This study examines China's changing involvement in global development financing through projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the New Development Bank (NDB). This analysis diverges from the hegemonic stability theory by exploring the consequences of China's ascent on the global economic system. It highlights the transition towards a multipolar world and the importance of inclusive collaboration. The article examines the operational dynamics, governance structures, and lending capacity of China-led initiatives in comparison to traditional institutions such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. It emphasizes the significant influence of China's involvement in global development finance. Furthermore, it assesses the diverse impact of China's ascent on the worldwide financial structure, including changes within current organizations and the global expansion of the renminbi. The article provides a thorough analysis of the changing dynamics of global development finance and the intricate relationship between established and developing countries that influences the future of international economic governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In asking whether China's growing economic power and international economic engagement increases or reduces the highly constrained industrial policy space associated with the contemporary neoliberal mode of regulation of international economic relations, it is argued that Chinese finance enlarges the development policy space as it significantly helps fill infrastructure gaps, while focusing on big clusters of projects in the energy, transport and industry sectors. In addition, it provides finance free of the neoliberal conditionalities attached to Western-centred multilateral and private finance. Regarding trade and investment relations, Chinese agreements are shallow and grant national states the upper hand in relation to behind-border industrial policy measures in striking contrast to core countries' neoliberal trade and investment agreements. Considerable emphasis is placed on the responsibility of the Global South to adopt measures enabling itself to seize the development opportunities derived from China's internationalisation approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many regional and national development questions involve the interaction of external and internal evolutions and can be conceived macroeconomically in balance-of-payments terms. In this light, China's engagement in international trade, outward and inward foreign direct investment, accumulation of reserves, development cooperation, aid and international finance initiatives are examined and related to evolving domestic and international conditions. After joining the Western-centred international economic and political order, while protecting its economic and political sovereignty and defining itself as part of the Global South, China emerged as a very large semi-peripheral upper-middle-income country. In the new millennium China and other emerging economies started to upgrade into higher value-added sectors and to reshape international governance arrangements in ways that reflect the civilisational values and colonial and semi-colonial experience of the Global South. Although these steps do challenge the unequal and unfair 'liberal rules-based order' and US hegemony, they also help create a more equitable and peaceful multipolar world system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the dark of a July night in 2018, a 5-billion-cubic-metre torrent of muddy water crashed through rooftops and ripped through the downstream villages of southeast Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR). An auxiliary "saddle" dam had collapsed in the US$1.02 billion Xe Pian-Xe Namnoy (XPXN) Hydropower Project that was still under construction and had just reached financial contractual close five years prior, in 2013. In the aftermath of the collapse, official state narratives pointed to extreme weather conditions and "unforeseen" construction and engineering miscalculations, viewing soil conditions as the primary culprit. This paper examines the financial dimensions of dam failure and introduces the term "fast finance": financier-driven timelines that have drastically expedited and shortened the legal, social, and pre-construction processes involved in hydropower dam projects to the detriment of dam safety, due diligence, and local participatory input. Extreme weather and anthropogenic climate change are not sole explanatory factors in the XPXN dam disaster. This paper highlights the also significant role of financial and political interests as contributing factors in dam safety and failure alongside extreme weather. The paper challenges conventional "natural disaster" framing of dam collapse by bringing into focus ex-ante political decision-making, financial engineering, and construction planning prior to dam construction to highlight the ways in which the XPXN catastrophe also had anthropogenic and "unnatural" contributing factors. Fast finance encompasses the role of temporality and the responsibility of state-business actors in ex-ante financial and infrastructure decisions that conclude with catastrophic outcomes. The article examines the re-engineering of contemporary dam finance through a case study of Lao PDR and argues that issues of financial engineering should be examined alongside other forms of civil, mechanical, structural, and hydrological engineering in the analysis of dam disasters. The temporal logics of financial actors-particularly the financialized logic of fast finance-has displaced the public-good-producing logic of patient capital. Financial logics shape and condition other forms of engineering and construction and are central to considerations of dam safety and accountability. Naturalizing discourses around extreme weather and aging dams deflect from the financial decisions and policy action, or inaction, of state-business actors to prevent dam collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has recently become an agent of intensified agricultural production in Southeast Asia by constructing large‐scale irrigation systems. Funded with Chinese development finance, such infrastructure projects have been interpreted as a 'spatial fix' for capital accumulation in China, which helps explain the shifting balance of power within the region's political economy. However, we argue that explaining the local outcomes of these projects requires mapping out Chinese development finance in relation to the multi‐scalar network of actors, circuits of capital, and struggles over water that produce irrigated landscapes. We draw on our joint research about the Chinese‐funded and built Kanghot Irrigation Development Project in Cambodia. We explain how the construction of Kanghot was shaped by the historical and political relations between China and Cambodia. Since completion in 2016, Kanghot irrigation has transformed agricultural production by enrolling farmers into a network of volatile commodity markets and harmful pest ecologies. There have also been ongoing community struggles over Kanghot's water due to the project's design and institutional management. By broadening the idea of infrastructure as spatial fix to include these material and social processes of agrarian landscape production, this paper advances a political ecology of Chinese development finance in Southeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The common view of critics of international finance is that unregulated capital movements destabilise developing countries. At the same time, financial innovations such as foreign exchange swaps are considered to be 'shadow banking' and a part of that destabilising international financial environment. The alternative is a reliance on finance in domestic currency. Here there is a problem that finance is poorly developed in many developing countries. This paper outlines an international financing mechanism, based on foreign exchange swaps, that provides for sustainable foreign finance of lending in domestic currencies in developing countries. Section 2 contains a literature review. Section 3 considers the conditions for stable financing of economic activity. Section 4 outlines a swap-based lending facility that can assist domestic financial development and discusses it form the microeconomic viewpoint. Section 5 looks at some of the macro-implications of such a facility. A final section concludes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When will members of a diaspora lend to the government in their country of origin? Diasporans make important contributions to developing countries by sending remittances and investment home. However, little is known about when and why diaspora communities are willing to invest in the governments of their country of origin. Diasporans may invest at home because of their affinity with their country of origin, whether in the form of national pride, stake in economic development, or political support. This paper investigates whether these different affinity-based motivations explain the interest of diaspora members in purchasing home country government bonds. We use a survey experiment fielded to members of the Pakistani diaspora living in the United States to investigate diaspora members' willingness to invest in home government bonds. We randomly manipulate the framing of the bond to measure heterogeneity in willingness to buy the home country government bond. We find that national pride and a stake in economic development are the strongest drivers for an individual's choice to invest in a home country bond. We corroborate these findings with follow-up interviews that reveal the resonance of appeals to national identity and developmental support. The findings have implications for the design and marketing of diaspora bonds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the financial importance of development banks across regions and income groups. We construct a global banking dataset for the period 1995 to 2021 and analyse the distribution of development banking assets across macro regions and country income groups. We create a composite global and national Development Bank Financial Importance index (DBFI index) that enables us to rank the most financially important development banks across the globe. Development banks play significant and diverse roles in the global financial system, but their financial importance varies across regions and income groups. The paper offers a broad analysis of the global development banking landscape and advances the area of research further.

Global development institutions herald private finance as a key mechanism for limiting climate change. Many have concentrated their efforts on bridging urban “infrastructure gaps,” thereby creating profitable fixes and establishing new markets through global climate finance initiatives (GCFIs). This paper examines the project preparation practices of GCFIs in cities of the global South to understand how global climate finance anchors itself within cities. Leaning on the concept of financial ecologies, we argue that these practices do significant relational work, linking emerging smaller financial ecologies with each other, thereby establishing a larger financial ecology of climate urbanism. Examining the actors, spatial strategies and relations of these initiatives, we conclude that the sum of these parts ultimately serves the reproduction of global climate finance itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) extended its mandate beyond Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to the Middle East. Since then, it has supported financial institutions, private sector involvement, energy production and, most recently, infrastructure and public service reforms. While the EBRD presents itself as supporting the region's economies in light of the refugee 'crisis', I question the power relations driving its recent public investments there. I situate them within the context of global capitalism's crises since the Great Recession and MDBs' development agendas in the Middle East, specifically increased aid since 2011. I argue that, jointly advanced by the EBRD and Jordanian state, the EBRD's public loans in Jordan offer fixes for capitalism's crises to the benefit of donors, the state as well as private investors. More specifically, the EBRD's projects and emphasis on the refugee "crisis" entrench and justify market-based neoliberal reforms in Jordan's infrastructure and public services, opening them up to investment and expanding accumulation at the expense of public interest. The Jordanian state is an active partner and beneficiary of these projects, not only establishing the necessary regulatory frameworks for them, but also aligning them with its own development agendas and interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) was created in the early 1990s to promote the transition to a market economy and advance democracy in the post-communist countries of East Central Europe. How and why did this international organization, established for an entirely different purpose, then become an active investor in Egypt? Building on field theory, we explain the EBRD's move to Egypt as an attempt to overcome the hysteresis effect of its anachronistic operational logic (habitus) within a changing field. Once in Egypt, the EBRD aspired to leverage its symbolic capital of technical assistance, democratic commitment and the privileging of the private sector. However, given Egypt's increasingly autocratic and state capitalist evolution, it found delivering on its symbolic capital problematic. Its solution was to adapt to the very active European development finance field's modalities. However, the European field's logic ultimately de-prioritized democracy, human rights promotion, and poverty reduction and instead focused on sustainable investment, migration mitigation and containing Europe's geo-economic rivals. In our case study, we demonstrate that the EBRD operated deftly within this field, while it also gained permission and even reward for its mandate management. It is a problematic finding for the future of the EU development policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A transition to clean fuels and technology for cooking is increasingly recognised as a cornerstone of sustainable development. However, sufficient, appropriate, affordable finance to support the transition is lacking. Grounded in primary data collection via expert interviews, this study’s research objective was to critically assess development finance institutions’ (DFIs) delivery of climate and development finance to address cooking poverty. Interview findings underscore DFIs’ important role in the transition, including to create the ecosystem conditions conducive to sustained investment. However, as a group they are not demonstrating the risk appetite and financial solutions that clean cooking markets need. Nor are they operating with the agility and flexibility required for rapid scale-up. Consequently, DFIs are not optimally fulfilling their mandates to create additionality and mobilise private capital in these markets. Interviewees call for DFIs to reconsider their approach, and we rely on these findings to posit a theory of change for clean cooking finance.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an opportune moment to revisit the mutual relationship between health and development. The Development Financing Institutes (DFI) at the behest of Multilateral and Bilateral actors have been investing in health systems to organize health care services and contribute to the goals of economic development. The article theoretically defines this model of development financing in health, and questions the utility of health systems which is indifferent to the wider determinants of health active in the spheres of ecology, environment and society. The pandemic prevention, preparedness and response will require both reassessment of development finance and restructuring of health systems to address the wider determinants of health. The article argues that health systems resilience needs to take one health approach in account in order to redesign health systems in the post-pandemic world. The development finance must rally support behind the one health approach to promote sustainable development, environmental protection, and ensure public health safety and security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional, policy and conceptual divides continue to throw up barriers to a shared understanding between the domains of urban design and development finance. Drawing on cross-Europe analysis, this paper explores the relationship between mechanisms of finance and tools of urban design governance, asking how they can work together to enhance urban quality. Practices were conceptualized and compared and those that combined tools were identified and evaluated. The results fed into an evolving typology of urban design governance and helped to establish clear principles for the effective combination of finance and design: adding 'design strings' to the finance of urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diversity and increasing number of development actors is a factor of complexity for recipient countries that puts at risk the efficiency of assistance delivery and undermines country ownership. The G20 Leaders have called on the international community to promote country platforms, owned by governments, to foster coordination among development partners and mobilize private investments. The objective of this study is to analyse the coordination exercise of the G20 Compact with Africa, a regional platform initiated under the Germany G20 Presidency in 2017, in line with its mandate to leverage private financing. In particular, we will investigate how the international community pursues common goals in the sectors of operations under the Compact with Africa and how Compact's countries structure their national development and sectoral strategies in synergy with development partners. The analysis will be triangulated through a documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews to assess how country platforms can contribute to promoting a coordinated approach among development partners in the definition of government priorities and attract private sector investments. Points for practitioners: The implications of this work emphasize that country platforms can act as a vehicle to harmonize, monitor, and narrow the number of development priorities in a country. For this mechanism to be effective, country leadership and ownership should be inclusive of all development partners and in line with governments' needs and targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the dynamics between soil degradation, integrated farming options and the uptake of these options in Southeast Asia. It begins with an overview of the status of soils, the reasons for degradation and the role nutrient management approaches could play in mitigating soil degradation, including available information on nutrient flows in smallholder integrated farming systems. This is followed by an assessment of the uptake and scale of integrated farming options in the region. Our findings indicate that the adoption of integrated systems by smallholders has not occurred at scale and we identify reasons for this at the farm and community levels. These factors include barriers to uptake and gaps in knowledge and data. We identify institutional barriers including limited research on the mitigation and reversal of soil degradation in the region, de-prioritized funding focus, and systemic research and implementation failings that result in significant uncertainties regarding the suitability of integrated approaches. While we do not explore the causes behind these factors and shortcomings in detail, we provide suggestions for improvements and alternative approaches to address the complexities inherent in integrated systems. We conclude that measurable improvements in soil degradation require changes in research and innovation promotion and that the additional costs incurred by sustainability-focused management need to be accounted for in international market principles.

This panel discussion session explores some of the central dimensions of the Crisis in the Anthropocene that constitute global social challenges in the context of development studies. The conference theme highlighted the profound human impact on our blue-green-brown planet, that is already breaching planetary boundaries and pushing us beyond the roughly 1.5°C tipping point. This threatens liveability and sustainability in many localities and regions and may well rapidly be ‘off the scale’ of imaginability and survivability. Inevitably, as mounting empirical evidence and increasingly clear projections by the IPCC and other authoritative bodies show, these impacts are unevenly spread, both socially and spatially, both now and over the coming decades. The urgency of appropriate action is undeniable and we already know many dimensions of the required adaptations and transformations. Yet progress mostly remains too slow. These challenges are vital to the development studies community – heterogenous as it is – with our concerns for tackling poverty, inequality, deprivation and environmental degradation globally and locally. Hence this symposium asks what the crisis means for development theory, policy and practice and what development studies can and should be contributing to – and, indeed, whether it is capable of – addressing some key dimensions that warrant greater attention.

The dominant approach of international organizations and financial institutions to development finance focuses on incentivizing and mobilizing private capital to achieve the international community's goals in terms of economic, social and environmental development while the public sector's financial capacity is supposedly restricted. Yet, this approach dismisses the nature of money as being endogenous, which implies that domestic banking systems can accommodate the demand for finance. The essential constraint, notably from the perspective of low-income countries, is not finance per se but the lack of foreign exchange. To distinguish true from false finance gaps, it is necessary for a country to know whether its investment plans rely on foreign currency. This analysis develops a guide to public investment based on the balance-of-payments-constrained growth model. It helps policymakers develop investment plans by assessing reliance on foreign exchange and the space available to make public investments via the domestic banking system. To illustrate its practical use, the guide is applied to a simple stylized example of a national investment plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infrastructure development is a major driver of biodiversity loss globally. With upward of US$2.5 trillion in annual investments in infrastructure, the financial sector indirectly drives this biodiversity loss. At the same time, biodiversity safeguards (project‐level biodiversity impact mitigation requirements) of infrastructure financiers can help limit this damage. The coverage and harmonization of biodiversity safeguards are important factors in their effectiveness and therefore warrant scrutiny. It is equally important to examine the extent to which these safeguards align with best‐practice principles for biodiversity impact mitigation outlined in international policies, such as that of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. We assessed the biodiversity safeguards of public development banks and development finance institutions for coverage, harmonization, and alignment with best practice. We used Institute of New Structural Economics and Agence Française de Développement's global database to identify development banks that invest in high‐biodiversity‐footprint infrastructure and have over US$500 million in assets. Of the 155 banks, 42% (n = 65) had biodiversity safeguards. Of the existing safeguards, 86% (56 of 65) were harmonized with International Finance Corporation (IFC) Performance Standard 6 (PS6). The IFC PS6 (and by extension the 56 safeguard policies harmonized with it) had high alignment with international best practice in biodiversity impact mitigation, whereas the remaining 8 exhibited partial alignment, incorporating few principles that clarify the conditions for effective biodiversity offsetting. Given their dual role in setting benchmarks and leveraging private finance, infrastructure financiers in development finance need to adopt best‐practice biodiversity safeguards if the tide of global biodiversity loss is to be stemmed. The IFC PS6, if strengthened, can act as a useful template for other financier safeguards. The high degree of harmonization among safeguards is promising, pointing to a potential for diffusion of practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has become the world's largest bilateral creditor to low- and middle-income countries, and yet its participation in collective debt-relief frameworks led by western multilateral institutions—the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Paris Club—has not met those institutions' expectations. Prevailing discussion perceives China's 'reserved' participation as free-riding on or contesting the international sovereign debt regime. This article advances ongoing discussion by drawing a historical parallel between China's current debt-relief approach and that of the United States and the multilateral institutions during and after the debt crisis of the 1980s. The article finds that towards the end of the 1980s, the US transitioned from practicing a new money approach—continued financing for existing projects—to a haircut approach—increasingly writing off debts. Around the same time, multilateral institutions started to become more acceptive of debt forgiveness. Yet China's policy banks, the main financiers of its overseas projects, have been primarily practising a commercially oriented, new money approach. China's rise has therefore revitalized an approach that western private banks once commonly practised and weakened the current international sovereign debt regime that took shape in the post-1980s decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This article analyses the policy capacity of the Brazilian Development Bank, BNDES, to develop and implement finance innovations to foster the local wind industry and their suppliers in the 2010s and which exogenous and endogenous factors conditioned its actions and the related outcomes. It demonstrates that technology, market, and policy drivers constituted exogenous windows of opportunities while, from an endogenous perspective, BNDES timely mobilised internal competencies to implement successive finance innovations resulting in a significant development of such sustainable industry. It is hoped that this article may be a source of inspiration for those engaged in researching and promoting policy innovations.

Chinese mammoth investment projects abroad, and especially those under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) umbrella, are receiving heavy scrutiny in academic and policy circles. However, there is insufficient empirical evidence to evaluate their impact. This paper employs a difference- in-differences approach and a pair of new datasets on government spending and economic activity compiled by the World Bank to examine the local impacts of the Chinese-Pakistan Economic Corridor in Pakistan. It finds that the 2013 announcement of CPEC was accompanied by a disproportionate increase in government spending in CPEC districts. However, in the six years after it was first announced, CPEC has not directly contributed a significant increase in economic activity in the districts along its path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several breakthroughs were made to achieve the SDGs targets, including in the development funding subject, namely blended finance. As a new approach to development financing, this approach is not yet widely understood. One of the basic problems is that there is no internationally agreed definition of what blended finance is. The actors translate this concept according to the characteristics of their respective institutions. This translation causes a variety of blended finance, from the types of input in the blended finance operation, what output is produced from the collaboration, to what impact these institutions expect from the blended finance project they are involved. This paper examines the definitions of blended finance from four institutions commonly involved in blended finance projects, i.e. OECD, DFI, Convergence, and the European Union. By reviewing a selection of reports and their working papers, it can be concluded that the input, output, and impact expected by these actors depend on the blended finance definition they make respectively. Actors whose definition focuses on development are more toward developmental impact, while actors whose definition focuses on an economic perspective prefer focusing on projects with profit-oriented impacts. Understanding the matter will help those new players in blended finance, including policymakers, to decide which partner is more suitable to collaborate in which phase of blended finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although energy consumption is highly related to economic growth and development finance, a consensus on the direction of causality among them has not been reached. To this end, this study aims to investigate the causal effect of economic growth and development finance on energy consumption with a focus on middle-income countries over the period of 1994-2014. Our empirical highlights unidirectional causality running from economic growth to total energy consumption; unidirectional causality running from financial development to total energy consumption; unidirectional causality running from renewable energy consumption to financial development; and unidirectional causality running from non-renewable energy consumption to economic growth. Based on the empirical findings, the article proposes some innovative solutions for effective energy management in smart cities towards sustainable development, harmonizing economic development and energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The China–Africa relationship has received increased interest over the past few decades as scholars critically examine the challenge that China, in its quest for a closer strategic partnership with Africa, poses to the norms governing the neoliberal world order (NLWO). One crucial aspect of this is international aid, and how Chinese aid to Africa differs from Western aid. This paper argues that Chinese aid reduces the power of traditional aid donors to shape the development route of African countries. This new development finance ultimately breaks the monopoly of Western aid to decide how poor countries in the global 'South' develop. In doing so, the Sino–African aid relationship is challenging the current world order as it offers African states the possibility to decouple (or delink) themselves from the global economy. By challenging assumed neoliberal economic development fundamentals, this relationship, if harnessed correctly by African leaders, can pose longer-term ideological questions around the very set of ideas that underpin development itself, while enabling African states the policy space needed to pursue more sustainable development from an Afro-centric perspective. It is this possibility to delink, due to changing ideological fundamentals concerning economic development, that is the challenge China and Africa pose to the NLWO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As China increasingly asserts itself as a global superpower, western academics, and policymakers have grown evermore wary of the nation's actions abroad. One particular field of concern has involved the perception of a growing Chinese footprint in Sub-Saharan Africa, financed and directed by the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Using open-source research, this paper attempts to determine if, indeed, Chinese investment in Africa is growing. Additionally, this paper attempts to determine if and to what extent Chinese investment in Africa is the result of the BRI. Ultimately, this paper concludes that Chinese investment in Africa has - counterintuitively - decreased since the introduction of the BRI. This paper attempts to establish how the faulty perception of increased Chinese presence in Africa could come to be so commonly accepted, and why this might be the result of western readers unwisely taking the words of Chinese officials at face value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the features and effects of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on China's policy banks' overseas renewable energy development finance in BRI countries. To this end, this study uses the financing for energy projects' data in China's Global Energy Finance database and performs regression analysis using Differences-in-differences (DID) and Difference-in-differences-in-differences (DDD) methods. The main findings are as follows. First, compared with non-renewable energy finance, the BRI can increase the number of renewable energy projects financing by China's policy banks in BRI countries; however, this positive effect is mainly reflected in hydropower projects and Southeast Asia. Second, from the perspective of the providers' features, the BRI has a more significant role in promoting the financing of renewable energy by China Export and Import Bank. In terms of recipients' features, China's development finance is mainly directed to high credit risk, low-income countries and regions that traditional donors have disregarded; thus, the policy banks tend to cooperate with government recipients. Third, the BRI has facilitated China's policy banks' renewable energy finance in high carbon intensity countries, breaking the carbon lock-in effect and strengthening renewable energy financing through the establishment of energy partnerships, reflecting the features of joint contribution and cooperation. Our findings alleviate some scholars' concerns about the environmental effects of the BRI to a certain degree and show that proactive policies of investing countries can guide development finance to contribute to the global energy transition and climate goals. • BRI boosts the frequency of China's policy banks' renewable energy (RE) financing. • BRI significantly affects the promotion of RE financing by CHEXIM in BRI countries. • China's RE financing is directed to high credit risk, low-income countries. • China emphasizes joint-construction RE projects to break carbon lock-in effects. • BREP provides an effective cooperation platform for China's energy financing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with urbanization as it shapes and is shaped by disaster finance instruments. It takes a critical look at the specific urbanizing qualities of these instruments by bringing an established theory of peripheral urbanization together with recent work on disaster urbanization to advance a theory of 'everyday disaster'—or smaller-scale events that occur repeatedly in the same areas, or events with extended recovery periods so prolonged that they integrate with the precarities of everyday life; and 'autorecovery'—or recovery processes that self-organize and improvise in response to the uneven distribution of state resources. It grounds these theories in extended ethnographic work done in Mexico City. It argues that where localized everyday disasters are ongoing, they fall through the cracks of existing financing schemes because of ongoing scalar mismatches between instruments and actually existing disaster conditions. These mismatches are compounded by state neglect and facilitated by the disconnectedness that defines peripheries. As disaster governance in global Southern states is pushed to global markets through risk transfer instruments, failure to effectively insure everyday disasters expands spaces of precarity that reproduce peripheral processes. These forms of governance affect urban spatial configurations, not only through disaster itself, but through modes of repair like autorecovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Securing adequate financing for the environment, climate change, and sustainable development has been challenging, especially in low- and middle-income economies. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country aspiring to become a member state of the European Union. Despite undergoing a socio-economic transition, the country is more than four times as energy-intensive as the average European Union member state. Since the end of the war in the 1990s, the country has received significant amounts of bilateral and multilateral development aid, including environmental finance (e.g., climate finance, funding for biodiversity conservation, impact funding). To facilitate future sustainable finance prioritization, this study analyzes Bosnia and Herzegovina’s environmental finance. Results The study conducted a scoping literature review and detailed analysis of the environmental finance flows for Bosnia and Herzegovina in the period from 2015 to 2020. The results show that the scientific knowledge on the (effectiveness of) environmental finance for Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost non-existent. The country received US$545.6 million in environmental finance in the studied period and more than 99% of this funding was spent on water, energy, waste, and environmental management. In contrast, biodiversity, resource management, chemical safety and environmental noise received less than 1% of total funding. Bosnia and Herzegovina received 58% of the financing in grants, while 38% was provided in various types of loans. Conclusions There is a considerable difference in the received funding among different sectors. Funders prioritized a few sectors (e.g., water), whereas others (i.e., biodiversity and nature conservation, chemical safety and noise, and resource management) were neglected. Bosnia and Herzegovina can argue for more equitable funding distribution based on its minor contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. Providing almost 40% of environmental finance to Bosnia and Herzegovina in loans increases the country’s level of indebtedness. It distorts the principle of climate justice since the country has been an irrelevant greenhouse gas emitter.

Following the end of the civil war in 2002, Angola entered a period of political stability and economic growth that was sustained until the oil-price crisis hit the economy in 2015. During this period a vast reconstruction plan of economic infrastructure was implemented. This process induced a series of changes that shaped the construction industry in the country, especially the rise of Angolan contractors as a by-product of the primarily externally funded reconstruction effort. This article aims to understand the political economy of infrastructure building in Angola's post-war reconstruction boom and the post-2015 crisis. We focus on the nature and dynamics of the emerging infrastructure market segmentation that led to the coexistence of Angolan, Chinese and other foreign contractors, when a part of oil rents was reinvested in infrastructure development, thereby generating a rapid development of the construction sector and its ancillary economic activities. The article explains the origins of segmentation among infrastructure contractors and the central role of oil-backed finance, particularly from China, during the boom and the crisis. It demonstrates the political imperatives of fast delivery of infrastructure assets for the maintenance of the dominant political settlement and the distribution of organisational power in Angola, which led to the rise of a well-organised element of state-linked Angolan capital in this lucrative sector. These experiences reflect the centrality of market segmentation and state–business relations in the evolution of the infrastructure sector in Angola, and the implications for the rise and consolidation of domestic capitalist interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The energy resources of Central Asia and the Caucasus have drawn significant scholarly attention due to their geopolitical importance and role in regional economic development. Western multilateral development banks (MDBs), such as the World Bank and the EBRD, have been the leading actors shaping norms and practices for lending to the energy sectors of these regions. China has also recently emerged as the top investor in hydrocarbons and renewables in Central Asia, at the same time increasing its presence in the Caucasus. How have Western MDBs and China shaped each other's lending practices? By exploring the what and the how of development finance in the energy sectors of Central Asia and the Caucasus, this study argues that a dual transformation is under way. The World Bank and the EBRD are now working closely with key local stakeholders in the recipient states to make energy reforms more successful. China, on the other hand, is now cooperating more closely with Western MDBs, and accepting and implementing some of their market principles and environmental targets. The article demonstrates that the West vs. China dichotomy based on neoliberalism vs. state-capitalism is blurred and the post-Soviet energy sector includes features of both models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has embarked on various initiatives to win the hearts and minds of African citizens. Does this strategy contribute to China's soft power in the region? To answer this question, we focus on two types of initiatives: cultural diplomacy and development finance. Using geolocation information on China's aid projects and its Confucius Institutes, combined with a survey of more than 50,000 African citizens, we find that both types of soft power initiatives increase citizens' awareness of Chinese influence in the region. Examining the effects of geographic proximity to project sites, we find that China's development assistance does not increase Africans' appreciation of China's development model, but its cultural diplomacy does. Overall, we find that among individuals exposed to China's development finance and cultural diplomacy, a greater awareness of China's influence in the region does not translate into a positive assessment of this influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of disaggregate official development aid (ODA) on economic growth, and ascertain whether bilateral and multilateral aid played complementary role with private sector, government sector and external sector in driving growth of sub-Saharan African economies. Design/methodology/approach: The role of bilateral and multilateral aid in economic growth of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is investigated in this study. The vector error correction model (VECM) and generalized method of moments (GMM) techniques are employed in estimating the short-run and long-run impacts, over the period 1980–2020. Findings: The estimation results reveal that the effect of bilateral aid is positive, and more significant than multilateral aid. Their effect on economic growth is, however, less significant than the effects of domestic private investment and government spending. Nonetheless, aid complemented private and government sectors in facilitating growth. External trade is the only exogenous variable in estimation that is insignificant. The results further reveal that economic growth is unable to significantly respond to its own lag. Generally, the estimation results conform to theoretical expectations. Practical implications: One major implication of the findings is that SSA countries have benefited substantially from development aid. It is, therefore, important for these countries to develop stronger institutions that would attract more inflows of development aid. Originality/value: The study was motivated by the fact that less attention has been given to the role of disaggregate ODA in economic growth of African countries. Previous research works have tended to focus more on aggregate ODA. Furthermore, adequate research has yet to be done on how ODA complements the private sector, government sector and external sector in facilitating growth of African countries. These issues are investigated in the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]