A new generation of pooled funds is helping to bridge the humanitarian-development financing divide. These flexible instruments are demonstrating that well-designed pooled funds can quickly pivot when faced with rapidly changing conditions on the ground. They combine, blend and sequence development, peace and humanitarian funding streams in crisis-affected countries. They improve cost-efficiency, transparency and collective outcomes not only by pooling resources and delivery systems, but also by sharing, and thereby reducing, the risks that often arise in highly volatile and unpredictable settings.

‘A key objective of TOSSD [Total Official Support for Sustainable Development] as a new international statistical standard is to help developing countries better map actual and potential sources of finance for their development.Their support and engagement is thus essential. In order to gather their perspectives and feed them into the development of the TOSSD framework, six pilot studies are being carried out in 2018–2019.’

Humanitarian financing is rarely an uplifting field. Its defining feature is an ever-widening gap between resources and needs, with most global appeals achieving just 50 to 60% of their financing goals. At the same time, evidence mounts that if we could ‘just’ ramp up spending on prevention, we might be able to make a dent in that gap. The ‘US$ 1 spent on prevention saves US$ X in humanitarian response’ adages become more compelling every year. The situation is further complicated by a wide range of barriers to change – public finance shortages, donor regulations that tightly define what is a humanitarian activity and what is a development activity, and, notably, the difficulty in justifying prevention in a world where emergency relief needs already outstrip supply.

Many countries around the world are extremely vulnerable to natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, severe droughts or epidemic outbreaks. While such natural disasters do not discriminate between developed and developing countries, the long-term economic impact on a developing country of such a disaster can be many times more severe than if a similar event occurred in a developed country.

Earlier this year the global community marked the first International Day of Multilateralism and Diplomacy for Peace, celebrated on 24 April. Some may question the need for another International Day of this kind, especially considering we already observe the International Day of Peace (21 September) and United Nations Day (24 October); two moments to reinforce the ideals and principles of the organisation. For those who ponder the relevance of a day devoted to multilateralism and diplomacy, I would invite them to take just a minute to flip or thumb through their favourite newspaper or social media newsfeed.

Migration in 2019 is at once polarising and unifying. There was thus something a little paradoxical about the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), adopted last December in Marrakech and subsequently endorsed, in New York, by the General Assembly. The creation of the Compact revealed at one and the same time both the intensely politicised nature of the discourse on migration yet also the clear recognition of the need to come together if its advantages are to be maximised and downsides minimised.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have always been an ambitious set of targets for the world to achieve. But, have no doubt, those goals can be achieved by 2030 as long as we all put our shoulders to the wheel.

Bilateralism vs Multilateralism: these are usually thought of as opposites.You are for one or the other. There is an undertone that if it is serious you do it bilaterally. This is fundamentally mistaken. Multilateralism is a hard option. To be effective, multilateralism must be a choice that is made because it is the most effective or efficient instrument available to a government. Countries should work multilaterally when it is the most effective way to meet a challenge.

Multilateralism is under attack. A number of prominent leaders from a wide variety of countries, from global powers (the United States) to emerging powers (Brazil and India), criticise major multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions. Nationalist movements around the globe fuel mistrust in international cooperation via inter-state platforms. Their leaders argue that, not only is national sovereignty incompatible with multilateralism, it is in fact directly threatened by the latter. They seize upon areas of relative or perceived inefficacy to make umbrella statements questioning the practices, motivations and principles underpinning major multilateral organisations.

Who is the millennial investor, and why focus on this cohort to drive Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) financing? Born in the late 1980s through mid-1990s, this age cohort constitutes a large proportion of the economically active population in many countries, including in emerging economies. To cite a few examples, in Nigeria and Ethiopia the median age is 18, Egypt 24, South Africa and Saudi Arabia 27, India 28, Indonesia and Colombia 30, Bahrain 32, Armenia 35, China 37, USA and Australia 38, UK 40, France and Sweden 41.

Graphs provided by Development Initiatives give an overview of international financial flows to developing countries. A global snapshot is provided in Figure 1 below, with disaggregated graphs provided in the subsequent graphs (Figures 2-5), presenting the trends for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) vs. non-LDCs, and fragile vs. non-fragile countries respectively.While commercial long-term debt and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) are dominant overall for the totality of ‘developing countries’, Official Development Assistance (ODA) remains a major source for the LDCs as well as fragile states as groups. Furthermore, the overall international financing flows are unevenly divided: LDCs – which housed about 15% of the developing countries’ population in 2016 and 7.6% of those living in poverty – received less than 10% of the total flows to all developing countries. Further, fragile developing countries accounted for less than 15% of the total inflows.

This paper discusses trends in cross-border financing of investments that impact the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). We presage this discussion with one stark observation: choices on the level and quality of physical and human capital investment in the next decade will shape development trajectories for years to come. Once in place, these investments cannot be easily undone. The window for putting in place sustainable infrastructure is rapidly closing. More infrastructure will be built over the next 15 years than the entire stock of today’s infrastructure. If it is not low carbon, a climate-friendly development pathway is not feasible. Also, more people are moving to cities than ever before. If transport, land-use and public service delivery are not made more accessible, inequality cannot be addressed. Last, there is a demographic bulge in Africa. If these children are not kept healthy and skilled, they will be left behind.

I arrived in New York in early 2016 to take on my new responsibility as Canada’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations. During my introductory meeting with former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, I asked him for advice about which area I, as Canada’s new Ambassador, could focus on that would have the biggest impact. His answer surprised me.

Over the last 18 months a number of multilateral resource mobilisation efforts were completed. The consultations among the member countries that precede agreements on the replenishment of multilateral concessional funds and on capital increases for multilateral development banks represent important opportunities for members to set the strategic directions, policies and operational modalities for these institutions, and to ensure that they remain appropriately funded to deliver on their development mandates.

China has become a major source of development finance for the developing world. Its highest profile effort is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – Xi Jinping’s vision of providing infrastructure and connectivity along the ancient Silk Road as well as along a so-called ‘maritime route’ that goes South from China, past Southeast Asia and South Asia, and on to Europe through the Suez Canal. But China’s effort goes well beyond this one project.

India’s development cooperation policy is the reflection of the broad principles followed by the Indian foreign policy of sovereign equality and a belief in friendly relations with all countries. In particular this means a new emphasis on the ‘Neighbourhood First’ approach by Prime Minister Modi’s administration, which in last four years has seen more of the lines of credit (LoC) (concessional financing) in the neighbourhood than ever before.

One of the derived wisdoms from the experience of implementing the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) suggests that the absence of an apriori understanding on the financing possibilities of the global agenda did affect its delivery. Thus, widespread satisfaction was expressed when the third Financing for Development (FfD) conference was held in Addis Ababa in July 2015, ie before the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). As the SDGs are rolled out at the country level over the next three years, it may be observed that the state of financing of the SDGs, particularly in the developing countries remains problematic—like clouds and wind without rain.

Civil society is committed to channelling individual voices and perspectives toward an improved present and better future through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Unlike the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), civil society voices in the SDG agenda drove innovative and multi-sectoral approaches that are grounded in transparency and accountability of governments, thus living out the Busan principle that non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society are ‘development actors in their own right’.

The evolving global landscape requires the international community to work together at all levels to leverage our unique and diverse advantages toward achieving sustainable development goals. South-South cooperation, whereby developing countries work together in the spirit of solidarity, mutual respect and collaboration, is a key modality for success.

When economists try to dig deep into what is perhaps the most fundamental question in economics (why do some countries develop and prosper, while others struggle and are even left behind?) the answer is always the same. It is not the accumulation of capital, which eventually hits decreasing returns. It is not even human capital, important though that is. The answer, short of staying clear from catastrophic events like war, is the accumulation of knowledge: ranging from institutional arrangements that foster economic growth and inclusion, to new methods of production.

It will take an estimated US$6 trillion annually from now until 2030 to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).¹ Green bonds, and more generally, bonds that focus on investing for purpose are making an important contribution towards meeting the goals – not just by raising funding for investment towards the SDGs, but by changing the way issuers and investors behave. This is why we must look beyond green bonds towards building sustainable capital markets.

The UN Environment Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System was launched in January 2014 with a mandate to advance options for improving the financial system’s effectiveness in mobilising capital towards a green and inclusive economy. In its early stages, there was some disbelief that it was possible to systematically insert sustainable development as a design criterion into the heartland of the US$ 300 trillion global financial system. A typical view came from one seasoned climate finance negotiator, who when hearing of the Inquiry’s ambition exclaimed, ‘surely you cannot touch the financial system: it’s sacred’.

In the 2017 edition of this report, we reflected on the UN’s role in engaging mainstream finance on sustainability issues, building on 25 years of the United Nations Environment Programme – Finance Initiative’s (UNEP-FI) work with more than 200 financial institutions globally. We underscored that the global finance sector has a distinct role to play in the achievement of the shared goals of the international community, as enshrined by the Paris Climate Accords, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and many other policy frameworks.

Over the past 18 months, we have seen an explosion of initiatives focused on driving more and better ‘blended finance’ – a game-changer in terms of funding the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

At the turn of this century, Innovative Financing for Development (IFD) emerged as a financing discipline that played a substantial role in the attainment of specific Millennium Development Goal targets such as Immunisation, AIDS, TB and Malaria. Over the next 15 years the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is expected to further leverage innovative financing to supplement existing public and private flows.