Understanding both the drivers and manifestations of inequality, poverty and economic insecurity are critical for solving them. Bold helps governments and institutions measure and assess these issues, but also helps design and implement policies and programmes across sectors that respond.

How the world addresses the climate crisis is not just about the science, advocacy and political engagement, but increasingly about the financial instruments and flows required to address mitigation, adaptation and climate-driven disasters. For frontline countries, disaster mitigation and response call for local and regional coordination and predictable, external finance flows. Bold works across these areas to bring workable responses for companies, institutions and governments.

Increasingly stronger commitments to the goals of the Paris Agreement to reduce emissions mean that companies and governments must undergo transitions of different types. Bold helps companies analyse their supply and value chains to find opportunities for emissions reductions, undertake climate accounting and understand the potential risk changes in climate may hold for their operations. Bold also works with countries at the national level on issues of just transition: ensuring balance in the decisions taken to meet net zero commitments, and that developing countries and their people do not regress in their economic and social well-being while climate targets are being pursued.

Women and men contribute to, benefit from and experience the economy in different ways. This is based on socialized notions of what it means to be male and female, and the inherent value and role of each group based on these notions. Policy is not fully responsive unless it uncovers and addresses implicit and explicit biases in how all genders are able actualize their full productive capacity and live the lives they choose. Whether it is work on unpaid care, national budgets, entrepreneurship, labour and many others, Bold advises on and helps execute gender-sensitive policy for inclusive growth and equitable development in this and across all practice areas.

The rate at which a country’s economy grows, and the extent to which this growth includes and benefits all, is based on several factors, key among which is the capacity of institutions to foster a competitive environment for new business to be created and for existing business to grow. While the standard drivers of human and natural resources, infrastructure and technology are critical, developing countries and populations often have other enabling environment factors to resolve. Bold works with the public and private sector to find and capitalize on growth opportunities.

Startups and small companies need the kinds of financing and support services that match their business model and foster their own innovative ideas. Larger companies often need to reach new markets, in particular large, poor and underserved populations who need access to key goods and services that would improve their well-being. Bold helps companies access new markets and find new customers who need their products most.

Bold helps investors looking for opportunities in emerging and developing economies find projects with both financial and social returns, and helps countries structure appropriate financial facilities to receive these investments. Such facilities include enhanced financial services for unbanked and underserved populations in those markets, helping them undertake their own investment, avoid risk and transact meaningfully. Bold services to investor clients also include investment facilitation in markets that are still developing their business facilitation capacity, to help provide more clarity about how these markets function and the potential entry points.

Increasingly, issues of how states finance their development are related to other critical matters, like climate, debt accumulation, public asset management and public-private partnerships (PPPs). Some of the constraints they face are external and originate in international financial systems, and others are internal to national systems of governance and public financial management. Bold works with international financial institutions (IFIs) to develop financial instruments that match developing country needs, and with countries to identify the right mix of external sources and internal management to achieve sustainable financial management.

Nutrition security involves not just growth of local and regional agriculture sectors to produce food, sustain livelihoods, develop mature value chains and integrate into global markets; it also includes overnutrition, its effect on health and implications for the supply of nourishing foods. Bold works with institutions, governments, communities and companies to address challenges in the agriculture and food sectors to help achieve nutrition security for all.

Access to water for individuals, communities and critical sectors remains a challenge as water scarcity increases globally, and sanitation practices are still needed that improve people’s well-being and protect groundwater supply and fragile eco-systems. Bold works with non-state actors, governments and companies to improve sustainability and increase access in the water and sanitation sector.