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Author Archives for David Wheeler

Tata Ultra Mega Mistake: The IFC Should Not Get Burned by Coal


[This post originally appeared on the Center for Global Development’s "Views from the Center" blog.]
During the last week of March, the Board of the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) will consider the proposed Tata Ultra Mega project, which will construct a huge (4,000 MW) coal-fired power plant at Mundra in India’s Gujarat State. [...]

CARMA Watch: Red Light for The World Bank Group on Coal-Fired Power


CGD’s CARMA website (Carbon Monitoring for Action) uses information on planned construction of power plants to project increases in carbon emissions during the coming decade. In India, for example, CARMA projects that new facilities will increase CO2 emissions by about 150%, and much of the increase will come from enormous coal-fired plants. CARMA’s ranking of [...]

India’s Quiet Counterpoint to Bali: Admirable Transparency, and a National Initiative to Limit Carbon Emissions


The Bali Conference witnessed more controversy about who should take responsibility for carbon emissions reduction. India and China refused to accept explicit emissions limits, citing the potential costs, their poverty problems. and US intransigence. The US countered by refusing to accept emissions limits as long as India, China and other developing countries remain exempt. Despite [...]

Bali: Disaster Loomed and Everyone Blinked. Now Let’s Get Serious, Fast


[This post originally appeared on the Center for Global Development's "Views from the Center" blog.] The White House finally blinked in the final hours of the UN’s Bali Conference on Climate Change. The catalyst may have been the unprecedented boos and hisses directed at the US delegation from the floor, or the peremptory challenge from [...]

David Wheeler

David Wheeler is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, where he works on issues related to climate change, natural resource conservation, African infrastructure development, sustainable development indicators and the allocation of development aid. From 1993-2006, as a Lead Economist in the World Bank's Development Research Group, he directed a team that worked on environmental policy and research issues in collaboration with policymakers and academics in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Ghana and other developing countries. His team focused particularly on reducing pollution through public information disclosure, in collaboration with the environment ministries of China, Indonesia and the Philippines. Since 2000, he has worked on priority-setting for country lending, grants and technical assistance with the World Bank's Vice Presidency for Operations Policy and Country Services, the World Bank's Environment Department, and the Global Environment Facility. During the past three years, he and his colleagues have initiated a climate change research program in the World Bank's Development Research Group, as well as collaborating with the Bank's Africa Region on a cost-effective strategy for road network upgrading in Sub-Saharan Africa. After completing his PhD in 1974, David taught economics for two years at the National University of Zaire in Kinshasa. He joined the economics faculty at Boston University in 1976, and taught there until he joined the World Bank in 1990. While on the BU faculty, he was a visiting professor in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning (1978-79), a co-founder and principal of the Boston Institute for Developing Economies (1987-1990), and Jakarta field director of the Development Studies Project for BAPPENAS, Indonesia's Planning Ministry (1987-1989).