Development finance: From resolutions to actionable solutions
The reform for a new global financing pact – as it was ambitiously designated by the French President Emmanuel Macron – allows little time for rest, combining several agendas that collectively seek to rethink how the Global South can finance its low-emission development pathways, with support from the Global North. The sequence of international events that starts this week with the Finance in common Summit, the African climate summit, G20 and followed by World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund’s Annual Meetings will be key to see if the multiple resolutions to reshape development finance outlined during the first semester of 2023 were merely wishful thinking or if they can be seen as the first bricks of a new international financial architecture.
At Finance in common Summit, in Cartagena, representatives from 500+ Public Development Banks gathered this week to discuss how to align financial flows with the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and the Paris Agreement. Though it is not the first event of the kind, this year’s summit was crucial to ensure that Public Development Banks are given a pivotal role in the reform and become instrumental in financing the transition, particularly at the local level. Indeed, they are key operating partners for Finance Ministries who are more than ever seeking new sources of funding, to meet the considerable needs required for their development up to an estimated US$ 3 000 billion by year by 2030.
As this year’s G20 host country, India has made green development and the closing of the climate finance gap one of the key priorities of the summit which will take place in New Delhi on Sept 9-10. And as a voice from the Global South, India could be instrumental in driving the redirection of financial flows towards low-carbon and resilient development pathways: let’s hope that at least part of the rhetoric is turned into action. Keep reading this newsletter to find out how I4CE is involved in these discussions, at country level, with T20, but also alongside Public Development Banks, through research and advocacy on the ground.