This Week in Global Development

This week we discuss Jeremy Lewin’s departure from the U.S. State Department’s foreign aid bureau to the White House. His transition to the National Security Council ends a controversial leadership marked by the retreat of the U.S. from its long-held role as the world’s leading bilateral donor. He is expected to be replaced by Andrew Veprek, who has pushed immigration and refugee restrictions at the State Department. 

As the United Nations continues to face budgetary constraints, we also analyze the potential merger of two major U.N. development agencies: the U.N. Development Programme, or UNDP, and UNOPS. While Secretary-General António Guterres sees this ambitious development reform as a way to overcome a yawning funding gap, UNDP chief Alexander De Croo and UNOPS Executive Director Jorge Moreira da Silva have butted heads over their vastly different visions for the future.

During the conversation we also discuss our key takeaways from the Hamburg Sustainability Conference, including a new initiative that is designed to tackle debt, trade, climate finance, and multilateral reform to help reset the terms of global cooperation.
To dig into these stories and others, Senior Reporter Adva Saldinger sits down with U.N. correspondent Colum Lynch and reporter Jesse Chase-Lubitz for the latest episode of our weekly podcast series. 

How can climate and nature investments move from ambition to action?

In the sponsored segment of the episode, recorded live at Devex Impact House during London Climate Action Week, Kate Warren, Executive Editor and Executive Vice President at Devex, speaks with Waqas Batley, Senior Director, Conservation and Climate Finance Policy at The Nature Conservancy.

Together, they explore how policy advocacy can help countries develop the plans, financial roadmaps, and regulatory systems needed to attract investment in nature and climate. The conversation looks at why nature should be understood as economic infrastructure, what finance ministries can do to send clearer signals to investors, and how approaches such as country platforms can help turn national climate and biodiversity priorities into investable pipelines.

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This special two-part edition of This Week in Global Development comes to you from the Hamburg Sustainability Conference, where leaders from across development, government, business and civil society gather to debate the big questions facing the global economy — from climate and debt to security, trade, and the future of international cooperation.

In part one, Devex Global Development Reporter Ayenat Mersie speaks with Achim Steiner, chair of the Hamburg Sustainability Conference and former administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, to explore a question at the heart of today’s geopolitical moment: Are governments preparing for the wrong kinds of threats? 

As defense budgets climb around the world, Steiner tells Ayenat that countries risk neglecting the investments that actually make societies more secure, from climate resilience and affordable clean energy to digital infrastructure. He also explains why sustainability should be seen not as a sacrifice, but as an opportunity to strengthen economies, lower costs, and build resilience.

In part two, Ayenat speaks with Sierra Leone Vice President Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh, who talks about “the politics of painful choices” — the difficult trade-offs governments face when debt burdens, aid cuts, and external shocks leave little room for long-term investment. He reflects on balancing immediate needs with climate action, why he believes countries need new tools to absorb global shocks, and what sustainability looks like from the perspective of a government under severe fiscal pressure.

In this special edition of the This Week in Global Development podcast, produced in partnership with the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation, Devex co-founder and Executive Vice President Alan Robbins sits down with three architects of Kentucky’s transformation in fighting high lung cancer rates: Dr. Jamie Studts, Dr. Jennifer Redmond Knight, and Dr. Timothy Mullett — the team behind the Kentucky LEADS Collaborative and the QUILS™ system.

After a decade of data, the results are clear: earlier diagnoses are being seen in Kentucky, and current efforts are seeking a similar impact in Mississippi and Nevada. But the real story is how these results were achieved. Rather than imposing top-down protocols, QUILS™ works by equipping local community programs with data-informed tools, continuous feedback, and practice support — helping local clinics serve as trusted access points for lung cancer screening in their communities.

The conversation tackles the hardest part of scaling any screening program: human behavior. Lung cancer carries a unique stigma rooted in decades of anti-smoking messaging, and that stigma remains a powerful barrier, discouraging eligible patients from coming forward. The QUILS™ response is to replace shame and fear with empathy and hope, building person-centered care directly into clinical workflows so the burden does not fall on patients alone.

For global health leaders, the implications are clear: The barriers Kentucky faced — rural isolation, underresourced systems, cultural mistrust — are not unique to one region. They exist everywhere. And the infrastructure built to overcome them may be exactly what the world needs.

Visit Strengthening Care Systems — a series raising awareness of the scale of the global lung cancer burden and the systems-level changes required to address it: https://pages.devex.com/strengtheningcaresystems.html

As London Climate Action Week gets into full swing, we break down the key talking points from the conference so far. With the city in the midst of a scorching heat wave, the discussion of climate change feels even more urgent than usual. 

We explore the transactional landscape that developing nations face, where much-needed capital is increasingly tied to the private sector.

Beyond the balance sheets, one of the current tensions is the collision between green ambitions and economic survival. From the push for rapid electrification to the rollout of Europe’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, African nations are being forced to thread a near-impossible needle: industrializing their economies while navigating low-carbon mandates.

Complicating matters is a growing communications crisis within the sector itself. To secure funding and dodge political blowback, many NGOs are camouflaging their climate work under the banners of health, food, or energy security. However, driving the climate conversation underground risks leaving the communities most vulnerable to extreme weather out of the spotlight when they need it most.

To bring you the latest from London Climate Action Week, Devex Business Editor David Ainsworth sits down with global development reporters Ayenat Mersie and Jesse Chase-Lubitz for the latest episode of our weekly podcast series. 

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In our landmark 150th episode, we discuss a common theme in global development over the past 18 months: the state of U.S. foreign aid. We’re seeing the State Department steadily replenish its workforce, with dozens of open roles across the agency’s global health, international aid, and disaster response bureaus.

On the topic of U.S. foreign assistance, last week Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed the U.S. remains the world's top aid provider "by far" despite the closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development. While provisional figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development indicate that Germany has officially overtaken the U.S. for the top spot, we find that the reality is more complex as the validity of the claim hinges entirely on how "aid" is defined. We break down the data and the nuance behind the figures.

To discuss these stories, and others, Senior Editor Rumbi Chakamba sits down with Business Editor David Ainsworth and Global Development Reporter Elissa Miolene for episode number 150 of our weekly podcast series.

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