The French Development Agency (French: Agence française de développement, AFD) is a public financial institution that implements the policy defined by the French Government. It works to fight poverty and promote sustainable development. This public institution is active in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, the Caribbean and the French overseas territories, where it finances and supports projects that improve living conditions for populations, promote economic growth and protect the planet.In 2014, AFD earmarked EUR 8.1 billion to finance projects in developing countries and for the French overseas territories, a commitment up by 4% compared to 2013. According to the OECD, 2020 official development assistance from France increased 10.9% to US$14.1 billion.Its headquarters is located in Paris. Its teams are based in Paris, Marseille and in a network of 72 agencies and representations abroad and in the French overseas territories.
Land-based climate policies in forest-rich developing economies are often assessed separately, overlooking how land scarcity, land prices, and macroeconomic constraints shape feasibility. This paper examines the macro-financial challenges of sustainable agriculture and forest conservation in Bolivia, where deforestation is high and fiscal and external constraints bind. We develop a dynamic version of the Exposure to Structural Transformation in an Ecologic-Economic Model (D-ESTEEM) to jointly analyse Bolivia's Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) policies for forest conservation and agricultural productivity. The locally calibrated, environmentally extended input-output model combines continuous-time monetary system dynamics, endogenous land prices, and demand-led adjustments in a small open economy. Forest conservation reduces environmental pressures but raises land prices, weakening the competitiveness of land-intensive activities and worsening fiscal and balance-of-payments pressures. Agricultural productivity measures ease land pressures and support output but rely on imported inputs, reinforcing external dependence. Overall, the NDCs improve economic activity and environmental outcomes while worsening fiscal and trade imbalances. Fiscal consolidation and exchange-rate adjustment mitigate some imbalances but entail inflationary pressures or lower output and employment. Environmental gains may therefore come at the cost of macroeconomic fragility. The paper shows how conservation-induced land scarcity and land price dynamics interact with fiscal and balance-of-payments constraints to determine the feasibility of land-based transitions in resource-dependent economies.
Sovereign debt burdens constrain green investment in fossil-fuel-dependent economies through two compounding channels: debt service obligations and external vulnerability. As the world’s fifth-largest coal exporter, Colombia illustrates this challenge. Oil and coal account for nearly 60% of foreign-currency revenues and 20% of fiscal revenues, interest payments on public debt are nearly 30 times larger than public expenditure on environmental protection. We analyse how the design of environmentally conditioned debt instruments shapes the macroeconomic conditions under which such an economy can finance a green transition. Using a calibrated macro-financial Stock-Flow Consistent model of Colombia (GEMMES) combined with multi-objective robust decision analysis, we evaluate four instrument classes — concessional green loans, local-currency bond issuance, interest rate renegotiation, and principal cancellation — and their combinations across 12 macroeconomic indicators, including fiscal, external, financial, and productive dimensions. Principal cancellation yields the largest and most persistent gains in fiscal space for green investment, appearing in over 80% of Pareto-optimal strategies even under adverse market reactions. Unlike interest relief, it reduces debt-service obligations in perpetuity rather than deferring them. Local-currency bond issuance proves to be efficient at containing external vulnerability. The most robust strategies systematically combine these two instruments, pointing to a structural mismatch between the bilateral swap agreements favoured by international creditors and the instrument mix supported by macroeconomic evidence. Importantly, we find that no single instrument can close the green investment gap, underscoring the role of complementary industrial and export diversification policies.
We propose a methodology to explore the robustness of multi-objective policy mixes in a developing-country context. As a proof of concept, we apply this approach to climate-mitigation financing strategies for Colombia’s Nationally Determined Contribution. We assess their ability to remain within a safe operating space defined by twelve indicators, using the state-of-the-art macroeconomic model GEMMES-Colombia. To account for radical uncertainty regarding Colombia’s future macroeconomic environment, we sample a large parameter space. We generate policy mixes based on three resource-mobilisation levers (the share of green loan funding, the share of foreign financing in green loan funding, and green tax funding), using a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm. We analyse their performance, robustness under uncertainty, and vulnerabilities across different parameter configurations. We find that a policy mix with broadly balanced debt and tax financing, combined with a moderate share of dollar financing, is the most robust.
This study analyzes projected climate extremes in Vietnam using 33 statistically downscaled CMIP6 models (CMIP6-VN database) across global warming levels (GWLs) from 1.5 °C to 4 °C, revealing significant regional variations in temperature and precipitation patterns. Temperature analyses demonstrate substantial warming trends compared to the baseline period 1995–2014: with northern regions (R1-R4) experiencing larger temperature increases—approximately 0.6 °C higher at 1.5 °C GWL and up to 1 °C higher at 4 °C GWL compared to southern regions (R5-R7). The annual percentage of warm days (TX90p) could dramatically increase from 25.5
AIM:To examine equity and respectful care for women and infants from five perspectives: the global context; economic issues; healthcare systems; legal and policy issues; opportunities to benefit from biomedical research. METHODS:Narrative review. RESULTS:Healthcare accounts for half the variance in health in low-income countries and substantially less in high-income settings; however, healthcare investment remains efficient and equitable. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) affects women and infants disproportionately. Women undertake the major proportion of domestic and childcare duties including breastfeeding as unremunerated labour. This is not factored into GDP, so they do not benefit from growth-promoting incentives. Many countries do not provide adequate paid parental leave, nor the option of sharing leave with the non-birthing parent, despite their positive impacts on infant wellbeing and family cohesion with economic benefits. The rights of infants have received little attention. Women and infants have less opportunities to benefit from biomedical preclinical, translational, and population research. Only one medicine has been developed specifically for a neonatal disease (surfactant). CONCLUSION:Inequity and disrespect to mothers and infants is a barrier to human progress. Recognising the problem and developing policies and legislation to ensure equitable and respectful care, as well as monitoring effectiveness, are extremely important.
