The Innovative Finance Revolution

By: Georgia Levenson Keohane, Saadia Madsbjerg

Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell

Assessments of how governments and international organizations have dealt with global challenges often feature a familiar refrain: when it comes to funding, there was too little, too late. The costs of economic, social, and environmental problems compound over time, whether it’s an Ebola outbreak that escalates to an epidemic, a flood of refugees that tests the strength of the EU, or the rise of social inequalities that reinforce poverty. And yet governments and aid groups rarely prove able to act before such costs explode: indeed, according to some estimates, they spend 40 times as much money responding to crises as they do trying to prevent them.

"The Innovative Finance Revolution" is from the July/August 2016 issue of Foreign Affairs.

©2016 Foreign Affairs (P)2016 Audible, Inc.