
New Approaches to Scaling Private Sector Funding for Sustainable Development
By Sonja Gibbs, Managing Director & Head of Sustainable Finance, IIF
This blog is part of the
OECD Private Finance for Sustainable Development Conference
Welcome to 2020–the “Decade of Delivery” for the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While the international development community remains hard at work on solutions, success over the next decade will require addressing an “SDG financing gap” of $5-7 trillion per year, with emerging markets making up $2.5-3 trillion of that. This will create tremendous opportunities for the private sector across the spectrum of investment vehicles—including foreign direct investment, listed and unlisted equity and private equity, in addition to the wide variety of debt instruments. Indeed, given the massive buildup of debt over the past two decades—to over 320% of global GDP, from around 230% in 1999—a shift towards more non-debt financing could be a more sustainable approach to closing the gap.
With fewer than 10 years left to achieve the SDGs, many low-income countries remain very far off-target. At slightly above 50, the low-income countries median on the composite SDG index—which measures country-level performance in achieving the SDGs—remains well below that of either mature or emerging markets (though there is substantial variance among low-income countries). Continue reading “New Approaches to Scaling Private Sector Funding for Sustainable Development”