Capital and the Common Good
Event
UNDP
Despite social and economic advances around the world, the mounting challenges of climate change, political conflict, mass migration, and economic inequality persist. Nearly 95 percent of the world’s poorest live in places that are either environmentally or politically fragile, or both.
The 2015 outline of the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals marked an important milestone in government efforts to grapple with the world's most urgent challenges. Yet, of the annual $3.9 trillion needed to achieve them by 2030, current global levels of public and private funding cover only $1.4 trillion. Many believe this unique goal can only be met through the efforts of an equally unique field: innovative finance.
While finance is not a panacea for the world's finances, a growing number of entrepreneurs are actively developing solutions to counteract fundamental market failures. According to Capital and the Common Good, a new book by New America senior fellow Georgia Levenson Keohane, creative configurations of nonprofit, commercial, and public-sector entities are coming together to harness market forces in myriad new ways: polio vaccines to children in the Democratic Republic of Congo; crop insurance to farmers in India; pay-as-you-go solar electricity in Kenya; and affordable housing and transportation alternatives in New York.
Join New America NYC for a conversation with Georgia Levenson Keohane and other entrepreneurship experts to discuss how innovative finance is transforming the way public-private partnerships are fusing monetary value and social value to tackle some of the world's most urgent problems.
PARTICIPANTS
Georgia Levenson Keohane @GeorgiaKeohaneExecutive Director, Pershing Square Foundation
Senior Fellow, New America
Author, Capital and the Common Good: How Innovative Finance is Tackling the World's Most Urgent Problems
Avi Karnani @AviKarnani
Co-founder and CEO, Alice Financial
Liz Luckett
President, The Social Entrepreneurs' Fund
Matthew Bishop @mattbish
U.S. Business Editor, The Economist
Copies of of the book will be available for purchase. Follow the conversation online using #InnovativeFinance and following @NewAmericaNYC.