Harnessing Innovation for Development

The world faces unprecedented environmental and social challenges. Devastating poverty and unequal access to education and health care are growing as the human population swells beyond 6.6 billion and the gap between rich and poor widens. Simultaneously, mega-city pollution, loss of biodiversity, fresh water and food shortages, and global climate change threaten the collapse of vast ecosystems. These challenges call for innovation on an unprecedented scale.  To date, most change has focused on incremental greening strategies like eco-efficiency, corporate social responsibility, or treating the symptoms rather than root causes of global health problems. While well-intentioned, it is doubtful that such incremental strategies will be sufficient. 

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Strengthening Infrastructure

From building canals and railroads, to rural electrification, to the telecommunications and internet revolutions, strategic investments in infrastructure have fueled transformative innovation, driven waves of economic growth, and radically improved the quality of people's daily lives.  Today the development of infrastructure is again essential for a robust modern economy. Our prosperity is increasingly dependent upon ample supplies of clean water, sanitation, health care, communications, energy, transportation, agricultural productivity, education, security, and other vital public goods and services.  Infrastructure enables an orderly development of healthy communities, thriving businesses, and a high quality of life worldwide. 

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Building Human Capital

Human capital – the individual and collective health, skills, capacity, and knowledge of people – is the foundation on which all other progress is based. Healthy and well-educated citizens who are given a political voice and access to opportunity play an essential role in alleviating poverty, promoting good governance, and ensuring a more secure and prosperous future for themselves, their families, their communities, and their countries. Investing in human capital is both a humanitarian imperative and a driver of economic vitality, technological progress, and political stability.

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Financing an Equitable Future

Financial markets -- banking in particular -- are in turmoil.  Confidence in financial systems, institutions, and financiers is falling across the world, undermining the trust that underpins the workings of every financial transaction, and, hence, all economies. 

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