"Empowerment of those living in poverty is both a critical driver and an important measure of poverty reduction. It is the decisions and actions of poor people themselves that will bring about sustainable improvements in their lives and livelihoods. Inequitable power relations exclude poor people from decision-making and prevent them from taking action. Sustainable poverty reduction needs poor people to be both the agents and beneficiaries of economic growth - to directly participate in, contribute to and benefit from growth processes. Strengthening poor people’s organizations, providing them with more control over assets and promoting their influence in economic governance will improve the terms on which they engage in markets. This economic empowerment combined with political and social empowerment will make growth much more effective in reducing poverty. This report aims to build donor understanding of empowerment and how best to support it."

"This discussion paper is part of a series of publications that draws upon the experience generated by the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) climate change adaptation and mitigation activities in some 140 countries over the past two decades.

The paper presents a framework for understanding what it means to be “ready” to use climate finance in a transformative way at the national level. In the context of the financial challenges posed by climate change, including the scale of financing required and the barriers to the effective use of climate finance (international and domestic; public and private), the paper presents a four-part framework through which to understand the different components of readiness and the specific capacities needed to underpin it. In this paper climate finance readiness is defined as the capacities of countries to plan for, access, deliver, and monitor and report on climate finance, both international and domestic, in ways that are catalytic and fully integrated with national development priorities and achievement of the MDGs."

pdf-file, 2,7 mb, 32 pages

"In order to achieve a 50 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, total financing to 2050 of around EUR 30 trillion will be required. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has concluded that a significant majority of this investment will need to come from the private sector. Public Finance Instruments for low-carbon development are publicly backed interventions that help to close financing gaps, overcome market barriers, and accelerate market uptake of low-carbon measures. This report has been prepared by Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in partnership with the Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy, drawing on the best up-to-date research and experience in the field."

pdf-file, 1,1 mb, 50 pages

"The World of Work Report 2012 provides a comprehensive analysis of recent labour market and social trends, assesses risks of social unrest and presents employment projections for the next five years. The report emphasizes that while employment has begun to recover slowly, job quality is deteriorating and there is a growing sense of unfairness. Moreover, given the pressure on governments to rein in expenditure, policy efforts have focused on structural reforms to boost employment creation. However, if policy instruments are not carefully designed, they could exacerbate the employment situation and aggravate further equity concerns, with potentially long-lasting adverse consequences for both the economy and society."

pdf-file, 5,7 mb, 128 pages

"This paper provides the first analysis of the Global Financial Inclusion (Global Findex) Database, a new set of indicators that measure how adults in 148 economies save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. The data show that 50 percent of adults worldwide have an account at a formal financial institution, though account penetration varies widely across regions, income groups and individual characteristics. In addition, 22 percent of adults report having saved at a formal financial institution in the past 12 months, and 9 percent report having taken out a new loan from a bank, credit union or microfinance institution in the past year. Although half of adults around the world remain unbanked, at least 35 percent of them report barriers to account use that might be addressed by public policy. Among the most commonly reported barriers are high cost, physical distance, and lack of proper documentation, though there are significant differences across regions and individual characteristics."

pdf-file, 4,7 mb, 61 pages

"Beyond Rio+20: Governance for a Green Economy is the second in The Pardee Center Task Force Reports series, and, as it happens, the timing for this report could not have been better. Recent and upcoming international meetings convened by the United Nations are focused on the challenges of actualizing the promise of sustainable development, of recreating a world economy that is “greener” and more sustainable, and identifying institutional frameworks that could help achieve this vision. Marking the 20th anniversary of the historic Rio Earth Summit of 1992, the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD)-popularly called Rio+20-has set for itself the goal of deliberating upon and designing such an architecture. This Pardee Center Task Force Report is a contribution to these deliberations."

pdf-file, 681 kb, 106 pages