Latest news with #NgoziOkonjo-Iweala
Ammon
2 hours ago
- Business
- Ammon
The World Needs a New Economics of Water
CAPE TOWN – As African leaders gather in Cape Town for the African Water Investment Summit, there can be no equivocation: the world faces an unprecedented water crisis that demands a paradigm shift in how we value and govern our most precious resource. The scale of the challenge is staggering. Over half the world's food production now comes from areas experiencing declining freshwater supplies. Two-thirds of the global population faces water scarcity at least one month per year. More than 1,000 children under five die every day, on average, from water-related diseases. And if current trends continue, high-income countries could see their GDP shrink by 8% by 2050, while lower-income countries (many in Africa) face losses of 10-15%. Yet this crisis also presents an extraordinary opportunity. As South Africa assumes the G20 presidency (for which I have been appointed special adviser to President Cyril Ramaphosa), it can champion a new economics of water that treats the hydrological cycle as a global common good, rather than as the source of a commodity to be hoarded or traded. The economic case for action is compelling. The International High-Level Panel on Water Investments for Africa shows that every $1 invested in climate-resilient water and sanitation delivers a return of $7. With Africa requiring an additional $30 billion annually to meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on water security and sustainable sanitation, the financing gap is significant; but it is surmountable with the right strategy. The Global Commission on the Economics of Water (which I co-chaired with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the director-general of the World Trade Organization, Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and Singaporian President Tharman Shanmugaratnam) recently called for such a strategy. Treating water as a global common good and adopting mission-oriented approaches to transform the crisis into an opportunity requires that we recognize three critical facts. First, water connects us all – not just through visible rivers and lakes, but through atmospheric moisture flows that travel across continents. Second, the water crisis is inseparable from climate change and biodiversity loss, each of which accelerates the others in a vicious cycle. And, third, water runs through every SDG, from food security and health to economic growth. Yet too often, water investments follow the failed playbook of climate and development finance. There is a tendency to derisk private capital without ensuring public returns; to fund projects without strategic direction; and to treat water as a technical problem, rather than a systemic challenge. Such approaches risk creating water infrastructure that serves investors more than communities, exacerbates existing inequalities, and fails to address the interconnected nature of the water, climate, and biodiversity crises. This interconnectedness demands a new economic framework that aims to shape markets proactively rather than simply fixing failures after the fact. We need to move from short-term cost-benefit thinking to long-term value creation, and that calls for mission-oriented investments that shape markets for the common good. Missions require clear goals – like ensuring that no child dies from unsafe water by 2030. Once goals are established, all financing can be aligned with them through cross-sectoral approaches spanning agriculture, energy, manufacturing, and digital infrastructure. Rather than picking sectors or technologies, the point is to find willing partners across all industries to tackle shared challenges. Such mission-oriented investments can also lead to economic diversification, creating new export opportunities and development pathways. Consider Bolivia's approach to lithium extraction. Rather than simply exporting raw materials, the country is developing strategies to avoid the traditional 'resource curse' by building domestic battery-production capabilities and participating directly in the energy transition. In doing so, it is converting its resource wealth into innovation capacity, strengthening value chains, and creating new export markets for higher-value activities. As matters stand, more than $700 billion per year is channeled into water and agriculture subsidies that often incentivize overuse and pollution. By redirecting these resources toward water-efficient agriculture and ecosystem restoration, with clear conditions attached, we could transform the economics of water overnight. To that end, public development banks can provide patient capital for water infrastructure, while requiring private partners to reinvest profits in watershed protection. Africa is uniquely positioned to lead this transformation. Its vast supply of groundwater remains largely untapped, with 255 million urban inhabitants living above known supplies. Combined with affordable solar power, these supplies present an opportunity to revolutionize agriculture. By focusing on efficiency and reuse, as well as on capacity building, data-sharing, and monitoring and evaluation, this relatively stable groundwater resource, accessed by solar-powered pumps, can be a decentralized alternative minimizing the emissions, waste, and other environmental costs implied by larger infrastructure projects that disrupt natural waterflows. Through Just Water Partnerships – collaborative frameworks that pool such solar-groundwater projects for increased bankability while ensuring community ownership – international finance can be channeled toward water infrastructure that serves both national development goals and the global common good. South Africa's G20 presidency – the first ever for an African country – offers a historic platform to advance this agenda globally. Just as Brazil has used its G20 leadership and role as host of the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) to drive climate action, South Africa can make water security central to the global economic agenda. With the 2026 UN Water Conference on the horizon, and with the international community recognizing that climate change cannot be tackled without also addressing the water crisis, the time is right for bold leadership. The African Water Investment Summit is not just another gathering, but should be a watershed. This is the moment when we should shift from treating water as a local resource to governing it as a global common good, moving from crisis management to proactive market shaping and from viewing mission-oriented investment as a cost to recognizing it as the foundation of sustainable growth. Water security underpins Africa's aspirations for health, climate resilience, prosperity, and peace. With young Africans set to constitute 42% of global youth by 2030, investing in water is tantamount to investing in the world's future. The question isn't whether we can afford to act, but whether we can afford not to. Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, and Co-Chair of the Group of Experts to the G20 Taskforce for a Global Mobilization Against Climate Change.
Gulf Today
a day ago
- Business
- Gulf Today
World merchandise trade projected to grow 0.9% in 2025: WTO
World merchandise trade is now projected to grow 0.9% in 2025, up from the -0.2% contraction forecasted in April but down from the 2.7% estimate pre-dating the tariff increases. The upgrade is mostly due to frontloading of imports in the United States, WTO economists said in a forecast update. However, higher tariffs over time will weigh on trade, bringing next year's expected trade volume growth down to 1.8% from 2.5% previously. A surge of imports in the United States in the first quarter ahead of widely anticipated tariff hikes contributed to the upward revision to the forecast for 2025 issued in the April Global Trade Outlook and Statistics report. Increased tariffs—including those that took effect this week—will dampen trade in the second half of 2025 and in 2026. WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said: 'Global trade has shown resilience in the face of persistent shocks, including recent tariff hikes. Frontloaded imports and improved macroeconomic conditions have provided a modest lift to the 2025 outlook. However, the full impact of recent tariff measures is still unfolding. The shadow of tariff uncertainty continues to weigh heavily on business confidence, investment and supply chains. Uncertainty remains one of the most disruptive forces in the global trading environment.' Asian economies are projected to remain the largest positive driver of world merchandise trade volume growth in 2025, although their contribution in 2026 will be smaller than predicted in April. North America will weigh negatively on global trade growth in both 2025 and 2026, but its negative impact this year will be smaller than previously estimated due to stronger-than-expected frontloading of imports in the US in the first quarter. Meanwhile, Europe's contribution to trade in 2025 has gone from moderately positive to slightly negative. Other regions, including economies whose exports are largely energy products, will see their positive contribution to trade growth shrink between 2025 and 2026 as lower oil prices reduce export revenues and dampen import demand. The higher tariffs that came into force on 7 August will weigh increasingly on trade, but this will be balanced against positive impacts from frontloading and inventory accumulation, which will have to be unwound at some point. Positive tailwinds have also come from an improved macroeconomic climate, although this is subject to a high degree of uncertainty. WAM
See - Sada Elbalad
2 days ago
- Business
- See - Sada Elbalad
WTO Cuts 2026 Global Trade Growth Forecast to 1.8% Amid Trump Tariffs
Taarek Refaat The World Trade Organization (WTO) has lowered its forecast for global merchandise trade growth in 2026 to 1.8%, down from a previous estimate of 2.5%, citing the impact of higher U.S. tariffs. The WTO said the revised outlook is largely driven by shifts in U.S. import patterns but remains well below the pre-tariff projection of 2.7%. In its latest trade update, the organization warned that recent tariff changes will have a broadly negative effect on the global trade outlook. According to the report, the elevated 'reciprocal tariffs' imposed by the United States on August 7, 2020, are expected to weigh heavily on U.S. imports and reduce exports from its trading partners in the second half of 2025 and throughout 2026. The WTO now expects global merchandise trade to grow by 0.9% in 2025, revising up its April forecast of a 0.2% contraction, which had been issued after Washington announced the tariffs and a temporary 90-day suspension for some of them. The 2026 projection of 1.8% growth is significantly lower than the earlier 2.5% estimate. Business Confidence and Supply Chains WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said that uncertainty over tariffs continues to weigh heavily on business confidence, investment, and supply chains. 'Uncertainty remains one of the most disruptive forces in the global trading environment,' she noted, adding that the world has so far avoided a broader cycle of retaliatory measures that could have severely damaged global trade. The Trump administration has framed the so-called 'reciprocal tariffs' as a response to countries acting contrary to WTO principles. Established three decades ago, the WTO was designed to set global trade rules, promote open markets, and discourage high tariffs and protectionist policies. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer wrote in a New York Times op-ed this week that the U.S. is ushering in 'a new era' in the global trade system. 'The current system under the WTO framework is no longer sustainable,' he argued, adding that the U.S. had secured greater access to foreign markets in just a few months than years of WTO negotiations had achieved. read more CBE: Deposits in Local Currency Hit EGP 5.25 Trillion Morocco Plans to Spend $1 Billion to Mitigate Drought Effect Gov't Approves Final Version of State Ownership Policy Document Egypt's Economy Expected to Grow 5% by the end of 2022/23- Minister Qatar Agrees to Supply Germany with LNG for 15 Years Business Oil Prices Descend amid Anticipation of Additional US Strategic Petroleum Reserves Business Suez Canal Records $704 Million, Historically Highest Monthly Revenue Business Egypt's Stock Exchange Earns EGP 4.9 Billion on Tuesday Business Wheat delivery season commences on April 15 News Israeli-Linked Hadassah Clinic in Moscow Treats Wounded Iranian IRGC Fighters Arts & Culture "Jurassic World Rebirth" Gets Streaming Date News China Launches Largest Ever Aircraft Carrier News Ayat Khaddoura's Final Video Captures Bombardment of Beit Lahia Business Egyptian Pound Undervalued by 30%, Says Goldman Sachs Videos & Features Tragedy Overshadows MC Alger Championship Celebration: One Fan Dead, 11 Injured After Stadium Fall Lifestyle Get to Know 2025 Eid Al Adha Prayer Times in Egypt Arts & Culture South Korean Actress Kang Seo-ha Dies at 31 after Cancer Battle Arts & Culture Lebanese Media: Fayrouz Collapses after Death of Ziad Rahbani Sports Get to Know 2025 WWE Evolution Results
The Star
3 days ago
- Business
- The Star
WTO cuts 2026 global merchandise trade growth forecast to 1.8 pct on higher U.S. tariffs
GENEVA, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Friday lowered its forecast for global merchandise trade growth in 2026 to 1.8 percent from the previous estimate of 2.5 percent due to higher tariffs. In its latest trade forecast update, the WTO said recent tariff changes are expected to have an overall negative impact on the outlook for global trade. Higher "reciprocal tariff" rates introduced by the United States on Aug. 7 are expected to weigh increasingly on U.S. imports and depress exports of U.S. trading partners in the second half of 2025 and in 2026, the WTO said. The WTO now projects world merchandise trade to grow by 0.9 percent in 2025, revising its earlier forecast of a 0.2 percent contraction made in mid-April following the U.S. announcement of "reciprocal tariffs" and a temporary 90-day pause on some of them. The WTO noted that the revised growth outlook is largely driven by frontloading of U.S. imports, but emphasized that the forecast remains well below the pre-tariff estimate of 2.7 percent. By region, Asian economies are projected to remain the largest positive driver of world merchandise trade growth in 2025, while North America will weigh negatively on global trade growth in both 2025 and 2026, according to the forecast. WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala noted that the full impact of recent tariff measures is still unfolding. "The shadow of tariff uncertainty continues to weigh heavily on business confidence, investment and supply chains. Uncertainty remains one of the most disruptive forces in the global trading environment," she said.
Time of India
3 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Trade forecast: WTO sees 0.9% growth in 2025; Asia to lead as North America lags
Global merchandise trade is projected to grow 0.9% in 2025, helped by a surge in US imports ahead of sweeping tariff hikes, but the World Trade Organization (WTO) warned that the impact of higher duties will hit hard in 2026. In its latest forecast, the WTO revised next year's trade growth estimate down to 1.8%, from an earlier 2.5%, citing policy uncertainty and tariff escalation under US President Donald Trump. While the current year's forecast has improved from a -0.2% contraction predicted in April, it remains well below pre-tariff expectations, PTI reported. 'World merchandise trade is now projected to grow 0.9% in 2025, up from the -0.2% contraction forecasted in April but down from the 2.7% estimate pre-dating the tariff increases,' the WTO said. The slight upward revision for 2025 is driven by frontloading of imports in the US ahead of the tariff implementation deadlines, the WTO noted. However, it cautioned that persistent uncertainty continues to undermine global trade momentum. WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the shadow of tariff threats is weighing heavily on business sentiment and supply chains. 'Uncertainty remains one of the most disruptive forces in the global trading environment,' she said. The trade body highlighted that Asian economies will remain the largest contributors to global merchandise trade growth in 2025. However, their role is expected to decline in 2026. North America, on the other hand, is projected to exert a negative drag on global trade volumes in both years. The revised estimates hold some significance for India, which has been grappling with muted export performance amid global volatility. India's merchandise exports were flat at $35.14 billion in June, while the trade deficit narrowed to $18.78 billion, a four-month low. Stay informed with the latest business news, updates on bank holidays , public holidays , current gold rate and silver price .
