Innovative
financial mechanisms that could dramatically
reduce the cost of managing global
risks can now be implemented by governments
across the world, according to
a ground-breaking book by the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP). UNDP Administrator
Kemal Dervis launched the
book entitled ‘The
New Public Finance: Responding to Global
Challenges’ on
28 January 2006 at the World Economic
Forum (WEF) in Davos.
‘The New Public
Finance: Responding to Global Challenges’ presents
how, through using creative, incentive-based
tools, governments could respond
in a more affordable and sustainable
way to international challenges
such as avian flu, terrorism, and
climate change. The widespread adoption
of these approaches could break
the cycle of under-funded and inadequate
responses to global problems, and
foster a new, less crisis-prone
globalized world.
More affordable, sustainable crisis response
would ensure that existing and future
development aid could be used more effectively,
improving the prospect of reaching the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of
halving poverty by 2015, and of sustaining
development beyond the target date.
Speaking at the launch, UNDP Administrator
Kemal Dervis said: "The growing
interdependence between countries and
the challenges this brings requires more
effective management of globalization
- management characterized by new levels
of cooperation between public and private
actors, between states and global markets."
'Landmark' text
The New Public Finance is the third in
a series on global public goods published
by Oxford University Press for UNDP's
Office of Development Studies (ODS).
It is edited by Inge Kaul who is the
Director of ODS at UNDP and Pedro Conceição
from the UNDP.
It has already drawn high acclaim from
prominent international figures.
Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz called
the volume "a landmark text that provides
the important beginnings of a field that
will be tilled for years to come".
Trevor Manuel, Minister of Finance for
South Africa said: "This is a bold
and penetrating compilation of papers
on the most profound challenges of modern
public finance – how to construct
better partnerships between governments
and private sector players and how
to strengthen cooperation between
nations in pursuit of common interests."
The UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon
Brown, a primary proponent of public–private
partnerships noted: "The New Public
Finance shows how we can equip people
and countries for the future – for
a new global economy that combines greater
prosperity and fairness both within and
across nations. It is important reading
for today's policymakers".
The current concentration of financial
innovations, all aimed at finding
more efficient and effective
ways of meeting global challenges, reflects
a fundamental change in the
traditional role of the state, argue
the report's editors. "Governments
act more and more as intermediaries between
the policy demands of global, mobile
actors, and those of local, domestic
constituencies," says
Inge Kaul, the lead-editor
of The New Public Finance.
The emergence of this new 'intermediary
state' is evident in the political debates
surrounding outsourcing, labour-market
flexibility, and capping harmful emissions.
It underlies the added policy emphasis
on managing cross-border risks to, for
example, prevent an outbreak of avian
flu, fight international terrorism, or
prepare for violent weather patterns
associated with global warming.
"Governments who learn to strategically
manage such long term and financial risks
are the ones who will ride out brewing
fiscal storms," said the book's
co-editor Pedro Conceição.
For background information on the book
and a breakdown of the topics considered,
please visit www.thenewpublicfinance.org.
The book overview is available in Arabic,
Chinese, English, French, German, Portuguese,
Russian and Spanish on the website.
http://www.undp.org/dpa/pressrelease/releases/2006/20060128-book.shtml
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