So That Was 2015

Summary

The CGD Podcast — "So That Was 2015"

Date: December 15, 2015
Host: Center for Global Development (CGD)
Theme: Reflections from CGD experts on the most significant developments of 2015 in international development, offering insights on global progress and persistent challenges.

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Overview

In this special year-end episode, various CGD fellows and researchers take turns highlighting what they perceive to be the key events, shifts, and lessons in international development throughout 2015. The episode provides a wide-ranging review across issues such as climate change, health, global data, migration, finance, trade, and education. The discussion also touches on how global interdependence has made development an issue of self-interest for wealthier nations, not just moral responsibility.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Climate Change Takes Center Stage

• Nancy Birdsall (00:52):

  • 2015’s main issue: Climate change, especially responses following the Paris Summit.
  • CGD’s focus: Tackling tropical deforestation, acknowledging its vital role in climate mitigation and the livelihoods of the poor.
  • REDD Pay-for-Performance Agenda: Promoting the payment of forest countries for the ecological service their trees provide, hoping this UN framework gains momentum.

• Jonah Busch (07:44):

  • Marks 2015 as "the turning point year on the international politics of climate change."
  • Bookended by U.S.-China climate cooperation and the unprecedented Paris Agreement.
  • Notable for Pope Francis's framing of climate change as a moral issue profoundly affecting the world’s poor.

2. Development’s Global Relevance Beyond Charity

• Owen Barder (02:33):
  • Policymakers, especially in rich countries, realize development impacts them directly.
  • Cites Ebola and the Syrian refugee crisis as examples—rich countries now see global health and migration as security and economic issues for themselves, not just humanitarian causes.

3. The Data Revolution and Its Challenges

• Amanda Glassman (03:18):
  • The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) pose a measurement challenge: "17 goals, 169 targets, many, many indicators."
  • Finding: Less than 2% of aid supports data collection.
  • CGD helped launch the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data to address data gaps and promote openness for true accountability.

4. Identification as a Development Accelerator

• Alan Gelb (04:30):
  • The inclusion of an identification target in the SDGs is significant—ID technology (especially biometrics) can enable progress in numerous other development goals.
  • Highlights the ID4Africa initiative: 27 countries convened to discuss identity technologies for development.

5. Unintended Impacts of Financial Regulation

• Vijaya Ramachandran (05:38):
  • Examined how anti-money laundering (AML) policies are leading banks in rich countries to sever ties with people and businesses in poor nations, creating barriers to financial inclusion.
  • U.S. Treasury responded in 2015 by recognizing the issue and launching new initiatives.
  • Celebrates Africa being polio-free for a year—significant health milestone.

6. Trade and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)

• Kim Elliott (06:47):
  • The TPP's conclusion is a major economic event, involving countries responsible for 40% of global GDP.
  • Raises concerns: Most developing countries are excluded from the TPP, and Vietnam (the poorest TPP member) may see limited benefits due to U.S. protectionism.
  • Advocates renewed focus on multilateral trade to safeguard the interests of all nations.

7. Economic Shocks and Growth Concerns

• Liliana Rojas-Suarez (08:34):
  • 2015 was "the worst year since the early 2000s" for economic growth in developing countries.
  • Causes: Bad domestic policies, declining commodity prices, and global financial uncertainty—especially concerning U.S. Federal Reserve interest rate moves.
  • Result: Stalled or reversed growth in the middle class and increased hardship for the poor.

8. China’s Ascent in Multilateral Development Finance

• Scott Morris (09:41):
  • China’s launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) marks its emergence as a key global development player.
  • Importance: 56 countries joined AIIB, challenging the U.S. and existing institutions like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.
  • Opens debate about cooperation vs. rivalry among old and new Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs).

9. Rethinking Development Finance – Domestic Resource Mobilization

• Casey Dunning (10:48):
  • Shift from aid to domestic resource mobilization (DRM): Helping countries build tax systems to pay for their own development.
  • 2015 saw the U.S. double its DRM commitment at the Financing for Development Conference in Ethiopia.
  • Implication: DRM supports ownership and priority-setting by developing countries themselves.

10. The Migration Crisis – Policy Challenges and Human Opportunity

• Michael Clemens (11:43):
  • 2015 was marked by a surge of refugees and migrants to Europe from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, and elsewhere.
  • “Fundamentally, these are people who are looking for the kind of basic security and opportunity that most people born in rich countries have by birthright.”
  • Raises major questions: Can aid deter migration? Should it? How can migration be turned into shared economic opportunity?

11. Ebola’s Lessons for Health Systems

• Todd Moss (12:57):
  • The Ebola outbreak highlighted gaps in international response and African health infrastructure.
  • By late 2015, affected countries were nearly Ebola-free and economically recovering.

12. Education: From Enrollment to Learning

• Justin Sandifer (13:49):
  • Shift in focus from just getting kids into schools to ensuring quality learning outcomes.
  • CGD’s RISE project (Research on Improving Systems of Education) and the UN's Global Goals now emphasize learning quality alongside access.

13. Global Progress: Fewer Famines, Lower Child Mortality

• Charles Kenny (15:02):
  • “The biggest thing that happened last year is something that didn’t happen at all, and that’s famine."
  • No major famines in 2015; polio cases eradicated in Africa; falling child mortality.
  • “2015 was the best year to be alive for humanity as a whole. And I think 2016 is going to be even better.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Climate Change and Poverty:

  “The big issue this year on the development agenda has been the climate problem…how important it can be in mitigating or reducing climate change and how important it is for livelihoods of poor people in the developing world.”
  — Nancy Birdsall (00:52)

• The New Relevance of Development:

  “2015 was the year in which policymakers realized that development matters for them, not just as a moral issue or an issue of charity, but because what happens in the rest of the world affects us.”
  — Owen Barder (02:33)

• The Data Revolution:

  “Less than 2% of all aid goes to support data...if the data is not out there being used, all of these great accountability ideas aren’t going to happen.”
  — Amanda Glassman (03:18)

• Migration as Opportunity:

  “Fundamentally, these are people who are looking for the kind of basic security and opportunity that most people born in rich countries have by birthright.”
  — Michael Clemens (11:43)

• Unprecedented Progress:

  “For the first time ever, there were no cases of polio anywhere in Africa…2015 was the best year to be alive for humanity as a whole.”
  — Charles Kenny (15:02)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:52 – Nancy Birdsall on climate change and forests
• 02:33 – Owen Barder on development’s direct relevance to the rich world
• 03:18 – Amanda Glassman on the SDGs and data revolution
• 04:30 – Alan Gelb on identification and SDGs
• 05:38 – Vijaya Ramachandran on financial regulation and polio in Africa
• 06:47 – Kim Elliott on TPP and trade implications
• 07:44 – Jonah Busch on the turning point for global climate politics
• 08:34 – Liliana Rojas-Suarez on economic growth and shocks
• 09:41 – Scott Morris on the rise of China and the AIIB
• 10:48 – Casey Dunning on domestic resource mobilization
• 11:43 – Michael Clemens on migration and refugees
• 12:57 – Todd Moss on Ebola and recovery in West Africa
• 13:49 – Justin Sandifer on education and learning outcomes
• 15:02 – Charles Kenny on famine, child mortality, and global progress

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Tone and Style

The episode is conversational and reflective, with each expert offering personal insights and hopes for the future. There’s a persistent undercurrent of cautious optimism, concern for vulnerable populations, and emphasis on the need for smarter, more inclusive global policies.

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Conclusion

"So That Was 2015" offers a wide-angle lens on the year’s progress and setbacks in international development, examining not only landmark events (like the Paris Agreement and migration crisis) but also shifts in policy focus (data, DRM, learning outcomes), and signs of silent but substantial progress (no major famines, polio’s retreat in Africa). The podcast captures a sector wrestling with both immediate crises and fundamental changes in the way development is understood, measured, and financed.

Transcript

[Kim Elliott / Casey Dunning]

Foreign.

[Rajesh Merchandani]

Hello, I'm Rajesh Merchandani, and thanks very much for joining me for this special edition of the CGD podcast. Now, throughout this year, we have brought you key CGD research. We've spoken to and heard from major players in international development, and we've asked some of the tough questions. How can we help poor countries in ways that are beyond aid? What will rich countries do differently now that they've signed up to the Sustainable Development Goals? Why are children in developing countries going to school but learning nothing? These are many more questions have been on the CGD podcast. But for this edition, we're going to do something slightly different. We're going to hear from a chorus of CGD experts about what, in their minds, have been the highlights of this very important year in development.

[Nancy Birdsall]

Hello, I'm Nancy Birdsall, the president of the center for Global Development. The big issue this year on the development agenda has been the climate problem. All year the question was raised, what will countries bring to the summit in Paris on dealing with the climate? I think that CGD has made a fantastic contribution to that discussion in the following way. We chose to work on the problem of tropical deforestation. I've learned from my colleagues how important it can be in mitigating or reducing climate change and how important it is for livelihoods of poor people in the developing world. We've put together a magnificent book and we've brought to Paris ideas for using an existing framework that the UN negotiators developed that was lying almost unexploited and that has to do with paying tropical forest countries for the service that their trees provide and doing that in a pay for performance framework, something that we've been working on pushing in many sectors for now five or six years. And I'm hoping that what we've brought, the way we've brought development finance world and forest world together on this agenda, this REDD pay for performance agenda, I'm hoping it is realized in the next several years.

[Oid Barda / Alan Gelb / Todd Moss / Charles Kenny]

I'm Oid Barda. I'm a senior fellow and the Europe Director at the center for Global Development. And for me, 2015 was the year in which policymakers realized that development matters for them, not just as a moral issue or an issue of charity, but because what happens in the rest of the world affects us. And we saw that with Ebola, where suddenly we had policymakers asking us, what is this World Health Organization and why isn't it stepping up to this problem? What can we do? Why don't we have vaccines for these diseases. And then we've seen it again with migration, with the Syrian crisis, the refugees. Suddenly people realizing that things that happen in the rest of the world affect us directly and there are things we can do about it and need to do about it, not just for us, but for the rest of the world too.

[Amanda Glassman]

My name is Amanda Glassman. I work on global health policy and data issues here at the center for Global Development. I think one of the biggest developments this year had to do with what we'll call the data revolution. As you know, the Sustainable Development Goals were launched this year. 17 goals, 169 targets, many, many indicators. So in order to know if this agenda is going forward as we'd like, we have to measure progress better. We have to measure baselines, we have to understand where we are. And we did some work this year to look at how well African countries are actually measuring these basics. We found that there was a lot of disappointment and there wasn't much money going to it at all. Less than 2% of all aid goes to support data. In part as a result of the work that we've been doing with partners over the past year, a new initiative has been started, the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. And this partnership is going to look at gaps, it's going to expand coverage, it's going to emphasize openness, because if the data is not out there being used, all of these great accountability ideas aren't going to happen. So I think that's the big development of 2020.

[Oid Barda / Alan Gelb / Todd Moss / Charles Kenny]

My name is Alan Gelb and I'm a senior fellow here at the center for Global Development. For the last several years, we've been looking at the implications for development of new technology in identification, including biometric technology. And I think it's very significant that this year the Sustainable Development Goals have included a target on identification, which, as we found through our work, is important not only in its own right, but as a way of moving forward other development goals. At least it doesn't really directly. So I think that's quite significant in terms of thinking about what this new technology can do for development. In addition, I think it's very significant that, you know, we've been associated with a major initiative to move this forward on the ground, the ID for Africa initiative, which brought together 27 countries, more than 350 people in Africa to focus on the development implications of this new technology. So I've been very proud and very pleased with those developments.

[Vijaya Ramachandran / Liliana Rojas Suarez]

I'm Vijaya Ramachandran here at the center for Global Development. This year I've been working on the unintentional consequences of anti money laundering policies for poor countries. And what I'm worried about is that banks in rich countries are worried about fines and mixed signals from regulators and are not doing business with poor people and with businesses in developing countries. This is very bad for people in India or Mexico or Brazil or Liberia. And so we've been looking at this during this past year. What I'm very happy about is that policymakers, including the U.S. treasury, are taking this problem seriously and are trying to understand it. And our report was launched this year by Under Secretary of Treasury Nathan Sheets, who has announced a series of initiatives by the US Government to try to understand this problem better. On a separate note, I'm also very excited about the fact that this year marks a year since Africa has been free of polio. And it will be a couple more years before we can say that polio has been eradicated on the African continent. But Nonetheless, these first 12 months are a significant achievement.

[Kim Elliott / Casey Dunning]

I'm Kim Elliott. I work on trade policy and food security issues here at cgd. And the big thing in trade this year was definitely the conclusion of the Trans Pacific Partnership. That's a trade agreement among the United states, Japan, and 10 other Pacific Rim countries that account for 40% of global GDP. So that's a big deal for those countries. My concern is the potential negative effects on the vast majority of developing countries that are not part of the agreement. And in addition, I've done some research that suggests that Vietnam, which is the poorest TPP member by far, will not see a lot of benefits in the short to medium run because of pressures from protectionist interests here in the United States. So my hope for next year is that the United States will devote more energy to the multilateral trade system which protects the interests of all countries, large and small, rich and poor.

[Jonah Bush / Scott Morris]

My name is Jonah Bush. I work at the center for Global Development on Climate Change and Tropical Forests. I think when people look back in a decade at 2015, they are going to remember this year as the turning point year on the international politics of climate change. The year began coming off a landmark agreement between the President of the United States and the President of China to work together on climate change. And the year ended with the first ever global agreement on climate change that involves nearly every country on Earth. And the turning point within the turning point year was when the Pope, speaking from his position, said that climate change is a moral issue because it affects everyone on Earth and it affects poor people on Earth. The Most.

[Vijaya Ramachandran / Liliana Rojas Suarez]

Hi, I'm Liliana Rojas Suarez here at the Center. From the economic growth perspective, 2015 has really been a bad year, actually the worst since the early 2000s. And the reasons have been multiple, including some bad policies from developing countries, but most importantly from adverse shocks from advanced economies, including declining commodity prices. But most importantly the huge uncertainty in international capital markets due to not knowing when the time of increase in the Federal Reserve interest rates were going to happen. That has created a shift in portfolio away from emerging market investments into advanced economies. This has been very. Has had very negative effects on developing countries, especially for the poor, since the growth of the middle class has practically stopped, stopped and even reversed. It is my Hope that in 2016 the international community will pay attention and will realize that the impact of their policies could have very negative effects on growth prospects for developing countries.

[Jonah Bush / Scott Morris]

I'm Scott Morris and I focus here at CGD on issues around the international financial institutions. These are institutions like the World bank and the IMF. And for me, the standout moment in 2015 was China's launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment bank, which really marked China's entree as a major development policy actor, notably convincing 56 other countries to join them in creating this new multilateral development bank. And really it was the U.S. the less than gracious response of the U.S. at the time that garnered a lot of attention. The more fundamental issue is what the AIB means for the existing multilateral development banks like the World bank and the Asian Development bank, whether they will operate as peers, as rivals. These are the fundamental questions going forward, which we will actually be exploring here at CGD through a new high level panel on the MDBs. The new and the old of these MDBs, what are their missions going forward? What are their mandates and what should they be? This marks a really important moment for the mdbs, which is why I'm so excited about the work we'll be doing through the PACE panel in 2016.

[Kim Elliott / Casey Dunning]

I am Casey Dunning and I work on US development policy here at the Center. And the most exciting moment for me this year in development was a global recognition that the conversation has moved from official development assistance to domestic resource mobilization. This kind of unsexy notion of helping countries to raise taxes and customs to fund their own development has been a sea change in terms of the financing of development. In July, we actually saw the US double its commitment to domestic resource mobilization at the Financing for Development Conference in Ethiopia. So here at the Center, I'll be paying very close attention to how they spend These monies and perhaps more importantly, where they choose to spend these money. Because ultimately, domestic resource mobilization allows a country to take ownership of their own development and their own development priorities.

[Michael Clemens]

My name is Michael Clemens. I study migration here at CGD. And for me, 2015 has been the year that hundreds of thousands of people started suddenly arriving in Europe from many poor and unstable countries. Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and lots of others. Fundamentally, these are people who are looking for for the kind of basic security and opportunity that most people born in rich countries have by birthright. And this very difficult set of events has started some important policy conversations that directly impact our work on migration and development. Can aid to poor and unstable places deter migration? Should it deter migration?

[Oid Barda / Alan Gelb / Todd Moss / Charles Kenny]

What?

[Michael Clemens]

What can intervention by rich countries do to foster stability and prosperity in poor countries? How can rich countries get together, as they have done in many similar crises in the past, to share responsibility and help turn waves of migrants into the long term opportunity, economic opportunity that they can be? These are some of the questions that many people, and us included, are asking right now.

[Oid Barda / Alan Gelb / Todd Moss / Charles Kenny]

I'm Todd Moss.

[Jonah Bush / Scott Morris]

I work on private investment in energy in Sub Saharan Africa. For me, the biggest event of 2015 started in 2014, which was the outbreak of the Ebola crisis in West Africa. I think that crisis exposed major weaknesses in international surveillance in the response time by the US and others to the crisis, and particularly gaps in the health systems in the affected countries. Now in 2015, those three countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, are almost all Ebola free. They're not entirely out of the woods yet, but most of those countries are getting back to normal. We're starting to see economic activity revive again. And I think that West Africa, if we can avoid another outbreak, is back on the path to growth and prosperity.

[Justin Sandifer]

Hi, my name is Justin Sandifer and I'm a research fellow here at the center for Global Development and I work on education. I think the biggest change in 2015 in education has been a change in the way we think and talk about education in the international community. There's been a real sea change for the last 20 years. We've talked about universal enrollment and getting all kids in school. And we've made huge strides in the last 20 years in that regard. But we've begun to realize that when we get kids in school, they're still not learning. We're still not achieving our real goal of education. And now the international community finally, I think, is beginning to absorb that lesson that we need to go beyond enrollment to focus on learning. Here at the center for Global Development We've been working on something called RISE research on improving systems of education to really push that agenda of learning for all. And if you look at the UN's Global Goals, you'll see that it also enshrines this idea of not just enrollment, but a focus on learning, focus on quality. So I think in 10 years time, when we look back, we may say that it was a gradual process, but 2015 was really the year that the international community turned the corner from just worrying about getting kids in school to worrying about learning outcomes.

[Oid Barda / Alan Gelb / Todd Moss / Charles Kenny]

My name is Charles Kenny. I'm a senior fellow at the center for Global Development. I think the biggest thing that happened last year is something that didn't happen at all, and that's famine. Nowhere worldwide was there a major famine. We've seen fewer and fewer over the past few decades and that's just one sign of a huge amount of global progress towards bad things not happening. For the first time ever, there was no cases of polio anywhere in Africa. We're seeing immense progress against child mortality, fewer kids dying. So over the last 20 years, the number of children dying before the age of five has halved. This is all sign of progress worldwide, which we really hope can continue. The Sustainable Development Goals suggest we can wipe out preventable child mortality by 2030. I hope that's true, but it certainly points in the right direction. 2015 was the best year to be alive for humanity as a whole. And I think 2016 is going to be even better.

[Rajesh Merchandani]

So you heard there a cross section, but by no means all of CGD's experts. In 2016, the podcast will continue to showcase new and great research that helps CGD turn ideas into action. You can find out much more about us and our work on our website. Get involved. Subscribe to the podcast and the newsletter. Donate cgdev.org is the address you need for that. And in 2016, remember to join me, Rajesh Merchandani, for the podcast from the Centre for Global Development.