This report serves as a starting point to address the calls from Rio+20 and the United Nations Environment Programme Governing Council to share the South’s various experiences and national-level initiatives for transitioning to sustainable and socially inclusive economies. Four unique national initiatives – all taking place in countries in the South, and at different stages of implementation - are highlighted: Ecological Civilization in China, Sufficiency Economy in Thailand, Green Economy in South Africa, and Living Well in Bolivia.
By emphasizing their common economic, environmental and social aspirations, as well as challenges and available resources, this report aims to benefit countries by sharing experiences that they may find relevant to their own particular challenges. In addition to providing concrete examples, such exchanges can empower countries to share and learn from home-grown responses to sustainable development challenges. In this report, sub-sections describing four national sustainable development approaches are drawn from contributions from the four project countries themselves.
This paper highlights the private sector involvement in investments to ease national fiscal constraints and to enhance efficiency in the provision of key services. Given that public investment requirements far exceed available resources in most developing countries, channelling public resources wisely as well as leveraging the opportunities to utilize both national and international sources of private or institutional finance is necessary.
In this paper, section 1 describes some general trends in involving the private sector in public projects. And section 2 focuses on PPPs and asymmetric information. Finally, section 3 draws some policy conclusions.
This paper is part of the working paper series "Infrastructure Finance in the Developing World" and is a joint research effort by GGGI and the G-24, exploring the challenges and opportunities for scaling up infrastructure finance in emerging markets and developing countries.
The main focus of this paper is on the assessment of the challenges and trade-offs faced by the three major national development banks (NDBs) in emerging economies in their efforts to (1) reach the goals set by their governments, (2) obtain the resources needed to function at a meaningful scale, and (3) operate within their unique economic and political contexts.
Followed by the first introductory section, the second section provides the overview of three NDBs. And the next section is primarily focused on the viability of the three NDBs to supply a significant share of financing for infrastructure investments in developing and emerging economies, supporting economic growth and improved living standards. The comparison of the CDB, DBSA, and BNDES indicates that NDBs have a significant role to play in this task and gain numerous important advantages. However, it is also clear that their role is inherently limited in nature. The final section of this paper draws some tentative conclusions and lessons regarding the role of NDBs in providing infrastructure finance.
This paper highlights some of the critical operational, financial, and governance obstacles facing multilateral development banks (MDBs) to provoke new thinking on ways to maximize the potential of the MDB model for development in general and infrastructure in particular. The rationale for MDB involvement in infrastructure remains as compelling today as it did when the MDB model was conceived following World War II. A financial cooperative among like-minded nations can overcome market failures and accelerate development, particularly if coupled with high-quality knowledge to improve project design and implementation. Existing MDBs have tremendous potential for catalyzing infrastructure investment if they are able to address some of the key obstacles inhibiting them, and ample room exists for new institutions utilizing the MDB model, such as the recently announced BRICS NDB and AIIB, among others.
This paper highlights the suitability of multilateral development banks (MDBs) for infrastructure financing, to provide the long-term financing needed for infrastructure investment to become profitable, given the large scale of the initial investment and the long amortization time. This paper outlibes giw MDBs can offer finance at a relatively low cost due to their high credit ratings. Thus, they can borrow relatively cheaper on the international capital markets and pass on that cost advantage to their borrowers. However, the authors note that MDBs face some restrictions in their ability to provide support to infrastructure, but nonetheless have numerous advantages in terms of financial terms, information, and ability to cope with risk, all of which can play a significant catalytic role. The paper is divided into the followig sub-sections: i) Loans (long tenors and big tickets) and Equity, ii) Technical Assistance, iii) New Partners, iv) Unfunded Instruments and v) Proved and Tested Instruments vs. New Instruments. And in conclusion, the authors present key findings from this study.
This paper expands upon existing literature by proposing a wider definition of what constitutes green infrastructure. It then develops a holistic cost model by defining and quantifying the investment categories that should be considered part of green infrastructure. This paper achieves three main objectives. First, it advances the concept of green infrastructure as a critical tool for sustainable economic growth. Second, it develops a new cost model and attempts an initial quantification of the additional needs for green infrastructure. Finally, it outlines an agenda for further research required to provide more accurate estimates of such needs.
This paper is part of the working paper series "Infrastructure Finance in the Developing World" and is a joint research effort by GGGI and the G-24, exploring the challenges and opportunities for scaling up infrastructure finance in emerging markets and developing countries.
This paper examines investments—in the form of equity or debt—in direct investments to infrastructure. It first introduces the pros and cons of project finance instrument. After that, it analyses infrastructure projects as a nexus of contracts and pool of risks. It then highlights the most important variables that investors look at when deciding to invest money in infrastructure projects. Followed by that, it draws conclusions and identifies some possible implications for the design of the business model of a newly created multilateral bank for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) countries.
This paper is part of the working paper series "Infrastructure Finance in the Developing World" and is a joint research effort by GGGI and the G-24, exploring the challenges and opportunities for scaling up infrastructure finance in emerging markets and developing countries.
This paper discusses some of the main challenges in developing a robust and viable project pipeline to address the daunting infrastructure needs facing many countries worldwide. It first introduces infrastructure project pipelines in different countries and then analyses challenges from political side as well as planning, preparation, and execution processes. After that, it presents project preparation phases and different types of project preparation facilities. Followed by that, it raises possible project preparation models for a new financial institution.
This paper is part of the working paper series "Infrastructure Finance in the Developing World" and is a joint research effort by GGGI and the G-24, exploring the challenges and opportunities for scaling up infrastructure finance in emerging markets and developing countries.
This scoping study provides ideas, techniques and case studies on how renewable energy can be better communicated to and by policy makers, decision makers and other stakeholders. It examines 15 case studies of renewable energy communications strategies from government, the private sector, and civil society. The majority of cases were found to lack rigorous, well-planned and adequately evaluated communications strategies. The study looks at how more targeted, effective renewable energy communications campaigns can be achieved through the use of more consistent, holistic and rigorous approaches to pre- and post-campaign development.

Agriculture and the agro-processing sector in Brazil have shown impressive growth over the past two decades. This has largely been driven by productivity improvements and structural adjustment resulting from broad economic reforms, as well as new technologies developed by agricultural science. Government policy and industry initiatives are increasingly focused on the sustainability of agricultural development.