1. The challenges of global
development

2. How to determine country
development level
 Easy to categorize richer and poorer countries
 Despite quantity of resources available, not necessarily equitably
allocated among social groups and programs (e.g. health and
education services)
 Countries with similar average incomes can differ substantially in
terms of quality of life:
◦ access to education and health care
◦ employment opportunities
◦ availability of clean air and safe drinking water
◦ threat of crime
 Notion of human development incorporates all aspects of individuals’
well-being, from their health status to their economic and political
freedom
 Economic growth increases a nation’s total wealth and enhances its
potential for reducing poverty, but not always followed by similar
progress in human development
 Growth can be achieved at the cost of greater inequity, higher
unemployment, weakened democracy, loss of cultural identity, or
overconsumption of resources needed by future generations.
 To be sustainable, economic growth to be nourished by
improvements in workers’ knowledge & skills, more and better jobs

3. What are the necessary
conditions for sustainable
development? According to the United Nations World Commission on
Environment and Development, development is
sustainable if it “meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their own needs”
 “Intergenerational” justice impossible to achieve in the
absence of present-day social justice.
 Social justice defined as equality of opportunities for
well-being, both within and among generations of
people, can be seen as having at least three aspects:
economic, social, and environmental.
 Only development that manages to balance these 3
groups of objectives can be sustained for long (Figure
1.2). Ignoring one of the aspects can threaten economic
growth as well as the entire development process.

5. Comparing Levels of
Development
 Natural capital unequally distributed (e.g. fertile agricultural
soils; rich oil and gas deposits vs. need to import fossil fuel).
 Lack of natural capital used to make big difference in
countries’ development; now not most important determinant
of development success.
 Productivity with which countries use their productive
resources (e.g. physical, human and natural capital)
recognized as main indicator of economic development, but
challenging to attribute value to these elements so
economists rely on gross national product (GNP) or gross
domestic product (GDP) per capita.
 Calculated as the value of the total final output of all goods
and services produced in a single year within a country’s
boundaries.
 To judge a country’s level of economic development,
indicators to be divided by the country’s population (GDP and
GNP per capita). Shows approx. amount of goods & services
each person would be able to buy in a year if incomes were
divided equally (Figure 2.1).

7. Why is world population growing
faster than ever before?
 Unprecedented increase in population growth in last 50
years (Figure 3.1).
 A “natural population increase” occurs when birth rate is
higher than death rate.
 While a country’s population growth rate depends on
the natural increase and on migration, world population
growth is determined exclusively by the natural
increase.
 In developing world, record-high rates of population
growth of 3-4% due to decline in death rates.

8. How to finance the post-2015
development agenda
 Need to rethink how to unlock resources/connect billions $
in official development assistance (ODA) to trillions in
investment of all kinds, public & private, national & global
 Global community provides roughly $135 billion a year in
ODA
 Ambitious new Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and
cost of achieving them to exceed current development
funding
 ODA to be used more strategically to catalyze additional
development resources
 Countries & private investors have largest potential
sources of finance for development
 International financial institutions can help countries get
money they need for development through better tax
policies, more efficient public spending, and private

9. References
 Soubbotina, Tatyana P., Beyond
Economic Growth, Meeting the
Challenges of Global Development
 Financing for Development Post-2015
This WBG report provides an overview
of the challenges and sources of
development finance post-2015