Suppose a DAC donor earmarks $1 billion of taxpayers’ money for official development assistance (ODA). The donor may use two instruments as an outright grant or in combination with a market loan to produce a concessional loan of $2 billion with a percentage grant element of 50 per cent. Many...

Poor countries are and will remain for some time vulnerable to external shocks, whether to export prices or from natural disasters. The lowest-income countries have a higher incidence of shocks than other developing countries and tend to suffer larger damages when shocks occur. For the poorest...

• Environmental policy should be inspired by the recognition that the environment is everyone’s business; all social actors must be involved in environmental management • Policies that implicitly subsidize a wasteful and environmentally destructive use of resources are pervasive: reforms...

• Early climate-related actions should be those with a high local economic and/or environmental payoff per unit of impact on greenhouse gases. • Energy, transport and natural resource management policies can often be better designed to realise greenhouse gas reductions at little or no...