The President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, has charged global leaders and development experts to consider adopting a new way of measuring wealth of nations in view of the lapses in the current Gross Domestic Product (GDP) approach.
Adesina, made this call when the United States’ nominee for World Bank Group President, Ajay Banga, met with him and senior management and Board of Directors of the AfDB on Monday in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.
According to him, the current GDP approach does not take into consideration other fundamental issues that are impacting on the performances of national economies.
The development finance banker pointed that emerging issues such as climate change and biodiversity were becoming increasingly critical to the global economic system’s performance and therefore should be taken into consideration when calculating the wealth of the nations.
On the GDP approach, the AfDB boss said: “This does not consider important factors like a country’s contribution to carbon emission and impact on biodiversity.”
“Globally, there is need for greater responsibility to tackle the impact of climate change, environmental degradation, and protect biodiversity”, Adesina stressed.
He maintained that climate change remained the most serious existential threat to humanity as it is decimating lives, displacing people, creating refugees and deepening poverty.
Adesina lamented: “It is what I call the triangle of disaster. You have increasing poverty, rising youth unemployment and environmental degradation, and this is breeding ground for terrorism.”
In order to mitigate the devastating impact of the natural phenomena on lives and fauna, the AfDB boss called for a global security council on environment and biodiversity, issues he considered were not getting the attention they deserved, compared to other global challenges such as war.
In his remarks, the World Bank Group President nominee spoke about the need for the World Bank Group to strengthen its partnership with the AfDB Group in order to deliver transformative results.
Banga highlighted three major issues, namely inequality, tension between humanity and nature, and the tendency to apply short-term solutions to long-term problems, that were currently negatively affecting many parts of the world.
The former Mastercard CEO said the challenges facing the world got complicated because of the Covid 19 pandemic, environmental degradation, and the impact of the Russia-Ukraine War.
He said: “It is more than financial. It’s more about how we work to optimize resources by engaging governments, the private sector, and other stakeholders to deliver meaningful change.”
