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 a special edition of the This Week in Global Development podcast, Devex cofounder and Executive Vice President Alan Robbins sits down with Brazilian thoracic surgeon Dr. Ricardo Sales do Santos to discuss a revolutionary approach to tackling lung cancer in medically underserved communities in Brazil.

As the most lethal form of cancer globally, lung cancer often goes undetected until its final stages, but Dr. Santos and the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation are working to change that narrative through a combination of mobile technology and local capacity building. By bringing advanced CT scanning units directly into high-risk, low-income communities, they are catching tumors when they are small and potentially curable, fundamentally shifting the odds for thousands of patients.

The conversation also touches on the logistical and cultural hurdles of delivering specialized oncology care to remote areas. Dr. Santos highlights the importance of “bringing the clinic to the patient,” utilizing mobile CT units and telemedicine to bridge the gap in healthcare access. Beyond the technology, the success of the program relies heavily on empowering local health workers and community members to recognize early cancer warning signs and overcome the stigma associated with a cancer diagnosis. This approach not only improves individual health outcomes but also strengthens the broader healthcare system, offering a scalable model for global health initiatives.

To learn more about sustainable improvements in cancer care and get a compelling look at how local solutions can drive global change, listen to this special edition of This Week in Global Development.

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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

Rachel Kyte has spent decades shaping global climate change policy — from the World Bank to the United Nations to the United Kingdom.

More than a decade since the signing of the Paris climate agreement, Kyte — the U.K. special representative for climate — is both inspired by how much has been done to tackle the climate crisis, and clear-eyed about the fact that it is not enough.

"It's joyful, tinged with deep sadness and regret,” she told Devex Senior Reporter Michael Igoe on the latest episode of Theory of Change.

Against the backdrop of a sweltering London Climate Action Week, Kyte outlined her vision for “financing climate.” That is a vision that stretches well beyond the narrower realm of “climate finance,” to include bolder transformations of trade, international relations, and public services.

"People want affordable electricity, they want clean air, they want clean water, they want protection against extreme heat, and they want flood control,” Kyte said.

"We have to be much better at taking the message to people and speaking with optimism and hope about why this is good for them,” she added.

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.

Against a backdrop of record-breaking heat in Europe and growing political pressure to slow climate ambition, Marcene Mitchell, senior vice president of climate change at WWF USA, joins Devex Executive Editor and Executive Vice President Kate Warren to make the case for staying the course. Marcene challenges the “small drop” argument — the idea that individual countries acting on climate don’t matter — and reframes clean energy and nature-based solutions not as a cost, but as an economic and strategic imperative. She breaks down how electrification and the AI-era’s energy demand can be decoupled from fossil fuels, why energy security is itself a climate argument, and what WWF USA — an organization most people associate with conservation — is quietly doing on climate finance and supply chains around the world. Learn how WWF USA is working globally to turn climate ambition into investable pipelines, and why the solutions to get there already exist.

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Development economist William Easterly famously does not mince words about the disappointments of anti-poverty megaprojects and far-fetched foreign aid plans.

For much of his career, Easterly has taken aim at experts who export their visions onto other people’s countries and communities — drawing from his own experience as one of those very experts.

In his latest book, “Violent Saviors: The West’s Conquest of the Rest,” Easterly unearths the long history of what he calls “the development right of conquest,” a worldview that has sacrificed individual rights and agency at the altar of material gain. He traces the long-standing tension between those who pushed for development at all costs and the dissenting voices who resisted them.

In the fourth episode of Theory of Change, Easterly unpacks the implications of that history for contemporary development efforts. He reflects on what alternative approaches to improving human well-being might look like — and what role aid institutions should play in pursuing them.

“There’s this technocratic illusion that you can reduce development to just technology and effectiveness of achieving measurable gains and these technical indicators of well-being,” he tells Devex Senior Reporter Michael Igoe.

“I think we all realize deep down the fantasy of keeping things purely technocratic is really a fantasy, that there really is a whole other dimension,” Easterly says.

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.

Register for Devex Impact House @ London Climate Action Week here.:

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U.S. foreign aid is undergoing one of the most tumultuous transformations in its history.

The Department of Government Efficiency’s dismantling of USAID and transfer of its remaining programs to the State Department upended the U.S. global development industry. But it’s much more than a question of organizational charts and institutional responsibilities.

At stake are fundamental questions about America’s national interests, how the well-being of people in other countries should influence economic and trade policy, and the nature of public support for a long-term vision of development investment.

Gayle Smith has faced those questions from a variety of vantage points — senior director for development and democracy on the White House National Security Council, USAID administrator, CEO of the ONE Campaign.

In this episode of Theory of Change, she shares a candid assessment of where the fight for U.S. leadership in global development should go from here — and who should lead the charge.

At this year’s annual meeting of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in Riga, Latvia, discussions centered on a critical structural shift: what development finance should look like in an age of persistent volatility. Ukraine is increasingly shaping the answer, as the bank’s sustained financing during the war emerges as a potential blueprint for future conflicts.

We were also on the ground for the World Bank Fragility Forum, an event uniting global stakeholders to address the challenges of operating in areas experiencing fragility, conflict, and violence. The deteriorating situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo emerged as a central discussion point. Highlighting the complexity of aid delivery in active conflict zones, the governor of the DRC’s South Kivu province issued a stark call to withhold funding for development projects until baseline peace and stability are secured.

Examining the Trump administration’s “America First” foreign policy, we also contemplate how to ensure that domestic resource mobilization becomes an effective way to increase development finance.

To dig into these stories and others, Senior Editor Rumbi Chakamba sits down with Managing Editor Anna Gawel and Global Development Reporter Jesse Chase-Lubitz for the latest episode of our weekly podcast series.

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Much of Seth Berkley's career has been an attempt to answer the question: How do you get vaccines to people who aren’t well-served by an inequitable global health system?

When the COVID-19 outbreak exploded in early 2020, that question took on new urgency — along with a mind-spinning slew of political, economic, technological, and cultural complications.

Berkley, then the CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, had a pretty good idea what was coming. As early as February 2020 he was warning publicly that if researchers were successful in developing a COVID-19 vaccine, lower-income countries would struggle to access them.

That is exactly what happened. It is also what led Berkley to help launch COVAX, the global initiative to deliver COVID-19 vaccines around the world.

In the wake of the pandemic, the relationships between politics, society, and vaccines have only grown more fraught.

One example: Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has personally intervened to block U.S. funding to Gavi.

Berkley, a physician and infectious disease epidemiologist, joined Devex’s Theory of Change podcast to discuss the lessons of the COVID-19 response, the long and complicated history of humanity’s relationships with vaccines, the incredible potential of new technologies — and the deeply troubling risks that some of them pose.

His new book is called “Fair Doses: An Insider's Story of the Pandemic and the Global Fight for Vaccine Equity.”

This week, we unpack the latest on the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. With no approved vaccines or treatments for the Bundibugyo species driving the spread, we dive into the race to develop a vaccine and the critical funding shortfalls standing in the way. While pledges have been made, much of that support has yet to reach those affected on the ground.

We also discuss the congressional hearings on Trump’s fiscal year 2027 foreign affairs budget request, which featured a debate on the Ebola crisis. With this being the first outbreak since the dismantling of USAID, we break down the United States’ approach to the health emergency.

To dig into these stories and others, Business Editor David Ainsworth sits down with Senior Reporters Sara Jerving and Michael Igoe for the latest episode of our weekly podcast series.

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