By David Stringer

Developing economies face an employment gap of 800 million jobs over the next 15 years as a generation of young people reach working age and the nations have limited resources to tackle the challenge, according to the World Bank Group.

About 1.2 billion people in the emerging world will pass the age of 18 over the period, while the countries are forecast to create only around 400 million new jobs, President Ajay Banga said Wednesday at the Climate Finance Summit in Antalya, Turkey.

The gap has “profound consequences for poverty and prosperity, for migration, for stability,” he said at the event, being held as nations gather in the resort city for the annual United Nations-convened COP31 climate talks.

“There’s rising debt, conflict, challenges with resiliency of infrastructure, and natural disasters, so their resources to meet their development ambitions are increasingly constrained,” Banga said. 

While mobilization rates were higher across lower-middle income countries and in upper-middle income countries, the flow of capital was flat in low-income countries, Banga said. “That’s the issue, the challenge of reaching the poorest markets and it kind of reinforces the importance of public resources for those lowest income countries,” he said.

Emerging economies also need better development models to improve resilience to the impacts of climate change — to protect coastlines, safeguard harvests, and deliver infrastructure able to withstand severe weather, according to Banga.

“We’re trying to bring together the combination of what we call smart development — build physical resilience and institutional strength into development from the very beginning,” he said. “A flood resistant road keeps trade moving without being rebuilt twice, an insulated school gives children learning through extreme heat.”