From Sevilla to 2030: Financing the SDGs in a More Fragmented World--A UN DESA Global Policy Dialogue for the Classroom SDG Studio Date: 15 April 2026 Language: English Transcript: https://transcripts.un.org/ar/asset/k19/k19dks3ko9?lang=en Transcripts available through this tool are created by using automatic speech recognition and are not official records nor official documents of the United Nations. Official records and official documents are available on the Official Document System of the United Nations. --- UNDESA · Sustainable Development Officer · Ariel Alexievich [0:44]: The Sevilla Commitment is a global promise to fix how the world supports countries as they climb the development ladder. Hello everyone, good morning from the United Nations Headquarters in New York and welcome to this Global Policy Dialogue for the Classroom on From Forecasts to Action using— oops, sorry about that. This is our event on From Sevilla to 2030. We are here to talk about today's Sustainable Development Financing Report. My name is Ariel Alexievich, and I'm a Sustainable Development Officer with the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, or UNDESA, and I'm very glad to be moderating our discussion today. Thank you for joining from wherever you are, whether you're watching on Zoom, UN Web TV, or following along on social media. We're delighted to have students and educators from around the world with us today too. So today's dialogue comes at a pivotal moment for sustainable development. One year after the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development in Sevilla, Spain, and the adoption of the Sevilla Commitment, which we just saw in the video, the world faces a stark reality. The costs of climate impacts are rising, development needs remain vast, and many countries are confronting high debt burdens, elevated borrowing costs, and shrinking fiscal space. At the same time, global trade and investment patterns are shifting, and official development assistance is under pressure. Against this backdrop, this new Financing for Sustainable Development Report 2026 asks a critical question: How do we turn renewed commitments into real progress for the Sustainable Development Goals? We will hear from our experts in just a moment, but I also wanted to note that today's discussion is just the start of a lot of conversations about this issue as the 2026 UN Financing for Development Week kicks off next week, Monday, April 20th, with the ECOSOC Financing for Development Forum and the SDG Investment Fair happening, among many things you can follow on UN Web TV and on social media. But for today, and for students especially, this dialogue is an opportunity to look beyond headlines and explore how global financing decisions shape development outcomes. From climate resilience to education, we're gonna talk about infrastructure inequality, and you will have the chance to engage directly with the experts who produced year's report and with a member of our high-level advisory board on economic and social affairs. So this is why we created this Global Policy Dialogue for the Classroom series, to open up UN policy discussions and invite you guys, the next generation of thinkers and leaders, into our conversation here. So we do have a fantastic lineup for you today. We would really like to thank UN Academic Impact for their partnership and the UN Peace and Development Trust Fund for making this event possible. So just a couple of housekeeping things before we begin. Captioning and transcript is available for those who are with us in Zoom today. If you hear something interesting and you want to post about it on social media, please use the hashtag #FinancingOurFuture. And this is an interactive session. We'd love your input in our polls, and you can submit your questions for our speakers using the Slido platform online. To get to Slido, you go to slido.com and insert the hashtag #FinancingOurFuture. That will be our theme today, all one word. And colleagues are posting the link to this in the Zoom and Facebook chats just for those audiences. Um, okay, so in fact, let's go ahead now and test Slido and get to know you all, our audience. And let's have you vote in our first poll. I want to ask you from where you're joining us today. Are you from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, Western Asia, or someplace else? I do see the votes are coming in, and it looks like we are having people from almost everywhere with us. And thank you, especially the people from Asia where it is quite late at night, but we are primarily North America and Europe here today. So thank you for that. I think that we will end that there. And I want to ask you a second poll question now, a more substantive one. And right now I'd love to ask you, which issue do you feel is the highest priority in your country for accelerating financing and investment in the SDGs? So is it A, debt, easing debt burdens so countries can invest in development? B, climate finance. Is it scaling up funding for adaptation and mitigation to climate change? Is it C, international tax cooperation, strengthening domestic resources mobilization through fairer global rules? And, uh, or D, sustainable private investment, mobilizing more long-term sustainable private capital? E, global governance reform, updating the governance of international economic and financial institutions to reflect today's realities? Or ask something else. Always have to ask something else. So please have a think about that. And while you're voting and getting to know the Slido platform, I would love to hear from our first speaker. We have with us today Aleksandra Gorosek, who manages engagement with civil society and leads the academic initiative at the UN Department of Global Communications. So Sasha, welcome, and over to you. UN DGC · Head, Civil Society and Academic Impact Section · Aleksandra Gorosek [6:53]: Thank you so much, Ariel. I was looking for the unmute button. You would think you do this every day and you still stumble when it's important, right? So, but happy to be here. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to all of you joining us, as we just heard, from all over the world. As Ariel kindly introduced me already, my name is Aleksandra. I go by Sasha, and I head the Civil Society and Academic Impact section in the United Nations Department of Global Communications. Through this UN Academic Impact Initiative, which is part of our newly established team in the department, we engage a global network of almost 1,900 universities across more than 160 countries. I hope some of your institutions are part of this initiative. If not, we'd be happy to welcome you. We connect higher education directly to the work of the United Nations. We align research, teaching, and stakeholder partnerships with the Sustainable Development Goals. And we are, of course, delighted to continue our partnership with UNDESA on the Global Policy Dialogue Series, which brings academia, policymakers, and the UN system into the same conversation. Today, as we heard, that conversation turns to the Financing for Sustainable Development Report 2026, which was released one year after the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development in Sevilla and the adoption of the Sevilla Commitment. The report arrives at a decisive moment. Developing countries face a convergence of pressures. They are contending with high costs of capital, heavy debt service burdens, and structurally low tax revenues. They are experiencing declining aid and disruptions to trade and investment. And all of this is unfolding while the costs of climate impacts and environmental degradation continue to rise. The SDG financing gap in developing countries now stands at roughly $4 trillion a year. Concrete progress on the Sevilla Commitment will be critical to closing it. This report, and we will hear more about it later from the experts, does more than diagnose the problem. It draws a roadmap, and for those of you joining us from classrooms today, also a learning tool. It shows how financing choices shape development outcomes, And it presses us to ask the urgent questions: How do we mobilize investment at the scale the SDGs require? How do we resolve the debt and development crises in ways that protect the most vulnerable? And how do we reform the international financial architecture so that it works for every country? And this is exactly where higher education is indispensable. Universities and research institutions bring the analysis, evidence, and innovation needed to turn global commitments into practical solutions. And analysis of this kind matters only when it reaches the students, educators, and researchers who will shape the decisions of the future. And that is why we bring this dialogue directly into classrooms. you're not only learning about the international financial system, you're learning how to interpret it, how to question it, and how to help reshape it. So many thanks to our colleagues at UNDESA for their continued partnership, and a warm welcome to today's speakers. I know Ariel will introduce them, but we are joined, and I'm very happy to be here with them, by Peter Chaola and Cecilia Cayo of DESA's Financing for Sustainable Development Office, who are also, I understand, co-authors of the report. And we are grateful to have with us Professor Stephanie Griffith-Jones, who is a member of the UN High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs. Thank you all for being here, and I look forward to this dynamic discussion. And over to you, Ariel. Thank you. UNDESA · Sustainable Development Officer · Ariel Alexievich [11:16]: Thank you so much, Sasha, for the warm welcome and for letting everybody know everybody know about what we're doing here, what UN Academic Impact has to offer, and the importance of this report and sharing it with as many people as possible so that we can get closer to our 2030 goals. So if we could just have a quick look at the poll results while Sasha was speaking, we had some 30 people voting on which issue you guys feel is the highest priority in your country for accelerating financing and investment in the SDGs. And the top answer with 33% is global governance reform. So people think we need to update the governance of international economic and financial institutions to reflect today's realities. We also have a lot of votes for sustainable private investment, climate finance, and debt easing burdens, with some votes there as well. So thank you all for voting. That is interesting, and it's always good for us to know what you guys are thinking about and how you're approaching this report as we get into our discussion. So let's go right now into our main conversation about the state of development finance. And I'm happy to introduce 2 of my colleagues from UNDESA. They both contributed to the Financing for Sustainable Development report, and they will break it down for us. First, we have Peter Tchala, a Senior Economics Affairs Officer in the Policy Analysis and Development Branch of the Financing for Sustainable Development Office of UNDESA. Welcome, Peter. And we are happy to have Cecilia Keo, an Economic Affairs Officer in the same office. So big welcome to you both. We appreciate you being here, and I will hand the floor over to you, Peter, to kick us off. UNDESA · Senior Economic Affairs Officer · Peter Tchala [13:11]: Great. Thank you, Ariel. Really appreciate your efforts to bring us together. And thank you, Sasha, for also your contributions from the DGC, who we've been working closely with as we launched this report. So this report was only launched— so we can get the first slide on the background. Sorry, the second slide, I guess it is. This report was launched last week, and just so people understand, some credit should be given. So we have a big team in our office who have worked on this. This is actually a big joint product with the entire international system. We bring in data and analysis through something we call the Interagency Task Force on Financing for Development. So it has been contributions from UNCTAD, UNDP, IMF, World Bank, and WTO, as you see there, as sort of key contributors at the core. But there's actually over 60 agencies that contribute. And I think Sasha mentioned this, that this is the first report since the Sevilla Commitment was agreed last year. So, or sometimes called the Compromiso de Sevilla, which was the Spanish name for our outcome of the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development. And so the, the Sevilla Commitment set an agenda for review of its, of its actions amongst member states. So we have 4 chapters that are really in focus this year. That's the private sector, trade, international financial architecture, and data. So I'm happy to see that you're all very interested in global governance. That's one of the topics we're, we're covering in depth this year. in this, in this report. And Ariel mentioned that we do have a big set of meetings next week here in New York, the Financing for Development Forum. We also have this week in Washington, D.C., the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank. So the report really sets a background and dataset for how, you know, how all those conversations can happen. We try to bring together a broad range of analysis from across the system. So we can see the next slide. The report really pinpoints a couple key things that I think you should remember. And then we're gonna— I'm gonna go through these, and then we're gonna go through a couple of the chapters in depth to see what the messages were this year. And I think many of you, you know, you all live in our economy. You're not just students. You can see that the global economy is in a rather fragile state in many places of the world. There are conflicts raging, which sometimes really have pretty drastic economic and social implications for people in that region, but also for the, for the wider world. We've also still emerging from COVID where we, the time of COVID pandemic had really pretty significant implications, not just for the health of populations, but also for economic growth and the financial system. And So in many countries, they're still recovering from that in many ways. And so there is an overall fragile global environment in which we're in. And on top of that, we see 2 key trends this year, which are— which has really animated the report. The first that we've got up there is, you know, sort of burgeoning global fragmentation. You know, we have seen that the geopolitical considerations, which have always been there, You know, geopolitics is always something that happens, but it's increasingly shaping trade and finance policies and economic policies more broadly rather than just sort of the peace and security policies. And those tensions are creating trade diversions, investment diversions, reshaping the way capital flows across borders, and creating volatility in financial markets. And that really creates stresses for many developing countries, particularly those that need to borrow on capital markets where their cost of borrowing may have gone up, interest rates may have gone up, that, that's creating a little bit of stress. And it's also the uncertainty, and Cecilia will talk a little bit about this, is impacting some foreign investment, trade flows, and other things. And with that kind of uncertainty, it creates a little difficulty for developing countries to generate the resources needed for investment. And it also undermines progress on multilateral issues that we need to take progress on. For example, climate change negotiations, which become much harder in an environment where countries don't trust each other and where there's tensions over, over many issues. The second thing we're seeing increasingly is a financing squeeze. So there was already a financing gap that was recognized in the Sevilla Commitment. That was the $4 trillion that was referenced earlier. So even in the negotiations last year, we've seen that sort of recognition that there's a big gap between what's being invested and what needs to be invested. But the problem is, we've seen in the last year that there's been a worsening of that situation for developing countries. And Cecilia again will come into some of the details on some of this, but we've seen aid declines across the board. We've just got some new data this week that she'll go over. And we've seen also debt service burdens reach 20-year highs. So that's a real challenge for developing countries as interest rates have gone up and debt costs have gone up. And we've seen all the trade tensions. explode in the last year, which is really creating economic costs for developing countries. And we have also seen declines in foreign investment, so that, that's impacting the way developing countries can, you know, invest in their economies and invest in also their social development. So the 3rd key message from this year's report, which I think is really important, is that in the face of global fragmentation and in the face of a financing squeeze, Really, the Sevilla Commitment, which was a set of 280 actions that were agreed last year, is the way forward because it addresses many of the underlying problems that are leading to the financing squeeze and to the global fragmentation. The Sevilla Commitment has, as I said, 280 actions across 7 different action areas, which are really aimed to close this financing gap and scale up investment. And if we take those actions, if member states implement those actions, it will address much of the issues with the financing squeeze, because we have actions around how to reduce the cost of capital, how to promote foreign investment, how to increase aid levels, and how to especially increase taxes and domestic resource mobilization and domestic private sector investment, so that those can all work together to produce progress on the SDGs. Second thing that the Sevilla Commitment can really do is, is it really contains a focus on impact and resilience. So it's really important that those, that the investment that is happening is investment in areas that, that is sustainable and will produce good results in terms of addressing some of the increasing disasters and shocks we're seeing. And then the third really important area from the Sevilla Commitment is reforming of the international financial architecture in ways that invest in and support multilateralism. Because as we've seen, there are many global problems, and the solution to many of our global problems will only come if we have global cooperation. And so that's a real key message from this year's report. I'm going to— I think we can go to the next slide now. I'm gonna hand— I think this is where I hand— oh, no, I'm gonna quickly go through this. Sorry. And then we'll hand over to Cecilia. So this is just a heat map we did. This is chapter 2 of the report of it, and I know it's very hard to read. So please go look at the report, and you'll see it in, in the chapter 2. But it— we mapped out the commitments, actions on both how many of them are domestic-oriented and how many are international-oriented and how many are cross-border. in terms of support, and then what type of actions they are, whether they're financing, direct financing actions, reforms to the regulatory or investment environment, whether they deal with data or science and technology. And what you can see actually when we did this and we mapped this out is that we did a very— the severe commitment that member states agreed to has a very broad set of actions that covers all different areas, in all different levels and means of implementation. And that's why it's a really good blueprint for how countries can take actions going forward. And I'll quickly show you the next slide. There is also a mapping of the, what we call the Sevilla Platform for Action, or the SPA. So in Sevilla last year at the 4th conference, 4th International Conference on Financing for Development, countries agreed to a number of voluntary initiatives, which are ways to take concrete actions to support the Sevilla Commitment. And you can see here that there was, I think, over 130 of them, and they support, you know, well over 100 of the— I think it's actually close to 170 of the 280 actions with very concrete plurilateral initiatives which let countries move ahead on how to do things together. So now at that stage, I'll turn over to Cecilia for the next slide. UNDESA · Economic Affairs Officer · Cecilia Keo [22:58]: Thanks so much, Peter. So I'll take you through some of the findings on development cooperation, private finance and investment, and trade. So on development cooperation, thank you, that's the right slide. The report covers all types of development cooperation, so official development assistance from the traditional providers of aid, South-South cooperation, MDB financing, climate finance, the way it's allocated and delivered, and then the development cooperation architectures at the global level and in countries. But as Peter mentioned, last week there was a release of the latest data on official development assistance, so I'll focus on that today, and it merits to be unpacked a little bit. And you can read all the rest in the report. So as you can see on the slide, there's a couple of notable things that we see from the latest release of the data and that we had started to see last year already. So in 2025, ODA, which is the official development assistance from members and associates of the Development Assistance Committee, or the DAC, at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, or the OECD. So this is a long way of saying the traditional providers of aid. So that fell by almost a quarter, by 23% in real terms compared to 2024. This is the largest annual drop in the history of ODA, and it brings volumes back to levels seen in 2015 at the start of the 2030 Agenda. And the cuts by the 5 largest providers accounted for almost all of the decline, so for 95.5% of the overall decline. And the US in particular, its ODA decreased by over half, so by 56%. And because of that, Germany is now the largest donor even though its own ODA decreased by over 17% between 2024 and 2025. So this is symptomatic of a bit of a— it's an unprecedented moment, I think, in the aid sector. And a couple of other things to note, I think, that are particularly relevant given the type of commitments that member states made in Sevilla on development cooperation. Are that bilateral ODA to development programs, projects, and technical assistance, so what actually reaches developing countries and can be used for development purposes. So this is the aid that, excluding humanitarian assistance, in-donor refugee costs, and debt relief, that fell by 26.3%, which again is the largest decline on record for this type of aid. And it reflects the fact that aid cuts extend beyond the elements that are usually very variable, like humanitarian assistance, for example. So it mirrors certainly fiscal pressures in donor countries, but also changing political priorities, of course. There was also a much sharper decline in bilateral ODA grants compared to loans. So grants declined by almost 30% compared to loans, which declined by 10%. And this is particularly notable in the current debt situation that Peter outlined, where debt service burdens are already at 20-year highs. And Peter will talk about that a little bit after as well. And it sort of compounds what we show in the report also in relation to financing from multilateral development banks, which has been increasing overall. And in fact, contributions to MDBs and regional development banks even in 2025 increased. But the share of financing from these organizations that qualifies as ODA, so the share that is concessional, has been declining. And overall, least developed countries are the most affected by both the cuts in volumes and the changes in the way that ODA is delivered. I think we can go on to the next slide. I think maybe one thing— this just shows the components of ODA and the trends overall. One thing to add perhaps is that the OECD projects that in 2026, ODA will decline by a further 6%. And then the next slide. I think it just shows the trends in MDB financing that I was just mentioning. So overall volumes, financing from MDBs is increasing, but the share that is concessional has been declining. I'll move to private and trade. So as Peter mentioned, the findings on private finance and trade reflect the effects of growing geopolitical uncertainty and structural shifts that are underway. Sorry. And the first thing to say, I think, for both is that they are central engines of sustainable development. The report acknowledges this, and that is a starting point. The main issue for private investment is that in order for it to fulfill its role and maximize its contributions to sustainable development, the focus, we argue, should shift from— to rather increasing the volumes of investment, but also maximizing the impact of those investments in line with country priorities. And this touches— we can go to the next slide. Sorry, I forgot. This touches on various aspects of policymaking, and these are elaborated in more detail in the report. But just to mention, the enabling environment, investments in physical infrastructure, the gradual development of financial markets, so really starting from building a domestic savings base first and banking system so that they can underpin more complex capital markets, and then the development of standards to inform policy and regulatory approaches to sustainable development and the adoption sustainable business and finance policies. The report also touches on how to enhance the ability of the public sector and development actors to mobilize private capital in developing countries. And here the conversation has long focused on maximizing the volume of private finance mobilized— sorry— and on standardizing the instruments that are used to to do that mobilization to attract private investors. And what the report highlights is that unless we start focusing on impact, not just the volumes, the quantities of finance, we won't be able to shift blended finance to the countries that need it the most. So to date, for example, the volumes of private finance mobilized in middle-income countries were 4 times higher compared to least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, and small island developing states combined. And the next slide— and sorry about this cough— I'll quickly go over them. So this one basically is showing what Peter already mentioned, stagnant private investment growth, and the next one, the sharp decrease in net investment flows to sustainable funds across the globe in the recent years. Moving on to trade, and then I'll hand it back to Peter. So on trade, thank you. The report highlights a few issues. So the first is that trade as an engine for development is at a crossroad. So on the one hand, the increase in trade restrictive measures have lifted the global tariff average, though unevenly across sectors and trading partners, and overall just contributed towards stark rises in uncertainty. And we have a chart in, in the next slide on this, but let's stay on this slide for now. And at the same time, the rapid rise in South-South trade, and the ongoing digital transformation are reshaping global trading and production patterns, offering new opportunities. But the capacity of countries to take advantage of these opportunities is not homogeneous. And again, developing countries and least developed countries in particular are those needing— do need additional support in this area. The report also touches on WTO reform, World Trade Organization reform, re-emphasizing the importance of this, including in relation to the dispute settlement system. And these are ongoing processes, but it remains very difficult to come to an agreement. The next slide shows, as I mentioned, the recent rise in uncertainty compared to historic trends. And with this, I'll hand it back to Peter. UNDESA · Senior Economic Affairs Officer · Peter Tchala [32:38]: Out of time here for the presentation, so I'll just move quickly to the next slide if we can see that again. So the, you know, we have also chapters on, an in-depth chapter on international financial architecture. Because of your strong interest in the voting rights question, I'll deal with that one especially. But to note that the chapter has some important discussion about the global financial safety net. That's the set of international arrangements and institutions that can help countries when they affect, when they see, when they are in a crisis or when they're feeling, experiencing some financing strain. And we also have a big section this year on trends in the international monetary system and potential changes to the international monetary system. from both different currencies becoming more prominent in the international financial system and the rise of digital assets like crypto and stablecoins. So if you're interested in those, please do read the report, or I can, we can answer your questions about them. Can we go to the next slide? So this one shows the, the real strong trend in sort of the financing costs for developing countries in the private market. So this is in the debt section. Just to flag that on the left side, you see that, you know, low-income countries or LDCs are paying over 8% coupons on their bonds right now. That's quite high interest rates. And you can see it's varied over time, but that this is, that's the orange line there. You know, it's on an upward trend right now. And you see that also for the middle-income countries on the right, though it's by historical standards relatively low for middle-income countries. What it shows you is that the poorest set of countries are not seeing relief in terms of high borrowing costs. And so while some of the middle-income countries are doing better than they may have historically, that, you know, for example, could apply to an India or Brazil. some of the poorest countries are really facing this financing squeeze the worst. And then we'll go to the next slide. And this is where we see the voting rights and voting share of developing countries in international institutions. It's not a very interesting slide to look at, and that, I think, reflects why many of you will have selected that voting right reforms are really overdue, because voting rights have really not changed in 15 years, or 10 years, I should say. So there were some— you'll see some small reforms around 2015, 2016 that changed things, you know, quite at a small level, at a low level down there for a couple institutions. But by and large, international institutional governance has not been changed in the last 10 years. And it's something that is going to become perhaps increasingly difficult to change in this environment of global fragmentation and of increasing geopolitical tensions. And, you know, developing countries were very clear in the Sevilla Commitment when they were negotiating it that they see the governance of these institutions as really shaping the policies of these institutions. And that's why it, you know, plays such a strong role in the Sevilla Commitment, in the actions that they really wanted to see from the global system. So, and one of the reasons why implementation of these actions around global governance reform is considered a high priority for many, many developing countries. And then next slide, I think we're gonna— I'll skip over this one, and I think we'll finish here. So the next slide just has a thank you and a link where if you want to download the report, please do read more. It's quite long, 250 pages or so. So there's a lot for you to study on many different topics. And thank you again for all— for listening, for being here, and we look forward to the conversation. UNDESA · Sustainable Development Officer · Ariel Alexievich [36:41]: Great. Thank you so much, colleagues, for that excellent presentation that includes some hard truths, but also a few areas of hope. I learned a lot, and I know our audience has a long list of questions for you. But before we get to that Q&A, we are honored to have with us a special guest to offer a reflection on what we just heard about the state of development finance. So I'd like to welcome Stephanie Griffith-Jones. She's a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Chile, and she is a Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. She's also a member of the UN High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs, which provides critical outside perspective on pressing global challenges for UN leadership. And we are so pleased she can be here today. So Stephanie, welcome, and over to you. UN · Member, UN High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs · Stephanie Griffith-Jones [37:35]: Well, thank you so much, Ariel, and thank you for the invitation by UNDESA to this really important classroom policy dialogue. I think the people who are in the audience are actually the future, the future policymakers, the future decision makers, and so it's a real privilege to be talking to you. As, as the report that Peter and Cecilia so well outlined points out emerging and developing countries face combined and increasing shocks. The latest being, of course, the war between the US and Israel with Iran, against Iran. And I want to, in my brief presentation, talk about 3 topics very briefly. The first one is how my— in my experience as a recent senior policymaker, when I was Deputy Governor or Vice President of the Central Bank of Chile, we had to face and try to overcome successive and frequent shocks and how we tried to do that. Secondly, I want to talk briefly about the impact of the recent war, which is ongoing, though hopefully it will be soon. and its effects on emerging and developing countries. And finally, I just want to finish by highlighting some of the important aspects that Peter and Angela and Cecilia have presented in this important report. So my experience as a policymaker facing shocks, when I arrived, I learned, of course, the Central Bank of Chile has an inflation target of 3% and hopes for a reasonable current account deficit on the balance of payments. So basically, a balanced macroeconomic situation, and it tries to achieve that with minimizing the cost on the real economy of any adjustment. And then And also, once the targets are reached, the macro equilibrium targets are reached, trying to support as much as possible recovery and growth of the economy. And at the same time, the government, which is separate from central banks, which are now autonomous, also wants to support the aim of macroeconomic equilibria. And at the same time, It wants to promote growth, employment, investment, as well as structural transformation. So when I arrived at the central bank, my timing wasn't very good. They were just beginning to recover from this major shock, which was COVID, which of course had many impacts on people's health and lives. but also had very important macroeconomic impacts. And one of, of course, were first, there was a reaction of the economic authorities. In the case of the central bank, it lowered interest rates as much as it could, practically near zero, and it provided cheap credit to commercial banks in the hope to try to for them to maintain levels of credit to households and companies so these wouldn't go bankrupt. At the same time, the government had a number of measures in Chile, but also of course worldwide, supporting both households and companies to try and maintain economic activity in these difficult circumstances. However, these measures led to a very important increase in aggregate demand, which was particularly high in Chile, but also in other countries like the United States. And this led to a sharp increase in inflation. So when I arrived, inflation was rising. It peaked actually at 14%, which was much higher than the average of the previous decades in Chile, which had been 3%. And at the same time, there was a massive current account deficit on the balance of payments of about 10% of GDP at the peak. So then there was a major effort by the government to lower the very large public sector deficit and did that mainly by cutting government spending, not because they wanted to, but because there was a need to to achieve these macroequilibria. And at the same time, the central bank started to increase interest rates, also not because we wanted, because we didn't want to harm economic activity. But on the other hand, we had to lower aggregate demand. And by— and at the same time as we were doing this, just soon after I arrived, Russia invaded Ukraine and there was a major second shock after the COVID shock, which was the increase in the price of oil, massive increase of price of oil, and also very important increase in the price of foodstuffs. And that, of course, had an important cost push effect on inflation. So there were these 2 shocks that we were simultaneously dealing with. Now, in spite of that, because of the measures taken, inflation came down and reached the target in early 2026, even though there had been a third shock, which was the increase of tariffs by the US government, which in the case of Chile did not affect the economy, fortunately, so much. But I think it will affect the international economy in the medium term. But in any case, as I said, The economy was growing 2.5%, inflation was at target, in fact, below target. Everybody was very happy. And then shock 4 arrives. We're talking about 4 years and 4 shocks, major shocks, which is the US and Israel war with Iraq, which is now unfolding. So this led to a major rise in the price of oil. at the peak at which it has been, fortunately it's come down a bit, it reached $120 a barrel, which is about 70% more than the price it had, 70% more the price it had as the war was starting. So that's a— which was about $70. And so what effects will this have? And I've been following this more in the Chilean economy, but it's also true worldwide. and you can read about it in the new IMF World Economic Outlook, inflation increased, will increase. For example, in the case of Chile, they're projecting that instead of 3%, it will go up to 4%. And possibly the market observers think it may be more. And economic growth will fall. Because when you have higher inflation, household incomes, family incomes go down because prices of goods that they can buy with their income increase. And so you have a fall in aggregate demand, and that will lead inevitably to lower growth, as well as you may have lower investment. So you have higher inflation, lower growth, and there's even risk of recession worldwide, which hopefully will not happen, but there is an increased risk of that. You have the price of petrol and diesel going up. You have increased costs of transport, increased costs of fertilizers, large part of which come actually from that region at war. And because of the real fall in incomes, you have this fall in aggregate demand. You have increased budget deficit. Governments have a need to borrow more. if they cannot raise income from taxes quickly. And particularly for those countries that are very highly indebted that Peter and Cecilia, sorry, and Cecilia were talking about, they are already heavily indebted, already have very high debt service, and their costs will increasingly go up. But there's perhaps a major problem, which I think links very closely to the report, is that all this continuous crisis management that policymakers, private actors, all social society, civil society actors, all are dealing with, all this crisis management distracts from the long-term goals of increasing sustainable growth and how to finance it, which this report being launched so brilliantly discusses. And this distraction is very, very bad. It happens always during, for example, financial crisis. All you're doing is trying to survive as a country, as an economy, and not being able to focus on the long-term challenges. And that's why the meeting at Sevilla and the report is very valuable because it still tries to keep the eyes on these long-term goals at the same time as also thinking about the ways to combat shocks. And so I want to just very quickly highlight some of the recommendations of this excellent report on how to deal with these shocks whilst helping maintain growth. And one that was already mentioned by Peter was a better international safety net Institutions like the IMF have many facilities that help provide finance in bad times. But these facilities, which are very valuable, can be further improved, enlarged, and widened to more member countries. And for example, my experience in Chile was we had a facility called the FCL, And which actually wasn't dispersed, but the fact that we had it allowed the central bank more freedom of movement, for example, to try and to intervene in the foreign exchange market and so on. So we saw how useful these facilities were, but I think it's important to have a continued dialogue to see how it can be improved and adapted to new conditions. There are also issues raised in the report like The fact that the IMF, for example, has the power to issue SDRs, Special Drawing Rights, which can be used as a sort of international money, which can be used mainly by developing countries and emerging economies because developed countries don't really need additional liquidity. And they can also be channeled, for example, to regional development banks that can then use it to increase their loans to countries that are precisely needing additional finance. And the report also discusses that. There's also, of course, the issue of increasing private finance, both international and domestic. Domestic, for example, but there is an emphasis which Peter already highlighted about not just increasing the international private finance, but also channeling it towards those flows that have the most impact on sustainable development. It's not just an issue of how much, but in terms of the quality of the finance and where it is channeled and how much it responds to countries' needs. And Finally, the point that actually was highlighted in the survey that Ariel so nicely conducted, which shows the importance of improving voting rights in these multilateral institutions, which will help shape them to meet the needs of the countries that they're mainly serving. And it's— there is, of course, this paradox because the share of emerging and developing countries, particularly Asian ones, has increased very significantly since these votes were fixed at Bretton Woods and in the period immediately after. And yet the voting rights in the chart that Peter showed haven't really changed at all or changed very marginally. So they're not reflecting economic reality. And I think financial institutions and multilateral institutions need to reflect the economic realities of the world today, not of the world over 50 or 60 years ago. I think there is also, I think one of the things that I want to perhaps finish with is to say that both this report, but also the Sevilla meeting, which I was very lucky to be able to attend, and participate in, reflecting this very important support for multilateralism. Because in a world that has increasingly global problems like preventing continued climate change and many others, combating drug dissemination of drugs, internationally, and many others, terrorism internationally, need multilateral action, but particularly in climate change, preventing, mitigating, and adapting to climate change, you need multilateral institutions. A strengthening of multilateralism is absolutely central. And I think also the Sevilla Commitment, the Compromiso de Sevilla, came out with this idea of having also SBAs, especially partial agreements between those countries that want to participate in those agreements to achieve progress where it cannot be done multilaterally. And also this report outlines what are these agreements and to what extent they've been fulfilled. So I think the outcome of Sevilla was, I saw it as a sort of light in a period of quite a lot of darkness, of hope. And it's a very interesting report, this, which I can recommend to read because it outlines to what extent important steps have been made. Thank you very much. UNDESA · Sustainable Development Officer · Ariel Alexievich [52:58]: Thank you so much, Stephanie, for that perspective. We are truly lucky to be able to learn from you and your global experience. And we hope you'll stick around for this Q&A portion as well. Because we have so many questions coming in, and I want to get right to it. I have a question here from Arjun Singh Gill writing on Zoom, who asks, In light of drops to ODA from 2024 onwards, are there methods or tools that intergovernmental agencies are employing to engage further private sector investment in development infrastructure small and medium enterprise initiatives, and how might this evolve in the future? So, I wonder perhaps if that's ODA-related, if that's a Cecilia question on how are private sector businesses being engaged, what is going on there? UNDESA · Economic Affairs Officer · Cecilia Keo [53:57]: I'd like to take it, and then colleagues can come in, of course. I'm sure I'll miss something. I think, first of all, I would say, let's remember public and private finance are not substitutes. So ODA is decreasing, it doesn't mean that the solution is more private investment. However, so while we want to keep safeguarding sort of high-impact aid and strengthen domestic resource mobilization, we do indeed look in the report as well on how to improve private capital mobilization. And I think one of the— maybe just to highlight a couple of things. The first is if we start thinking of private capital mobilization as a spectrum, so we can understand that it's anything from sort of creating new markets to mobilizing capital at scale in mature markets. And the approaches, the instruments that you use, depending on where you are on that spectrum, are very different. And to date, there's been a lot of work on sort of standardizing different blended finance structures and instruments, but it hasn't really been conceived from a country ownership perspective. So in starting from what countries actually need and how can those instruments or structures be best applied to achieve those needs. So I think one of the things we're working on is to better map all of the modalities and the structures that exist depending on what the investment purpose is and what the country needs are. So that's a very sort of almost academic thing that we hope can then help with the political questions and the policy questions. And then I think maybe one other thing is that there's a lot going on with the multilateral development banks working better among themselves and with regional banks and with national development banks to coordinate their initiatives in this area. So even within MDBs, they have a sovereign arm and a private investment arm. So those working better together coordinates the way that they use their concessional capital and their private investment support to private investment better so that you— I guess it's the usual, you know, if you collaborate and your actions are coordinated more, there's obviously efficiency gains. So even if we have an envelope that is shrinking, we're hoping to do more and better with what we have. And I think maybe, yeah, maybe, I mean, one basic thing, sorry, maybe I should have said this at the beginning, is that blended finance overall in general works where there is potential for private returns, but just you need the nudge to private investors because they wouldn't go there by themselves. So it's not something that you can use to finance anything across all of the SDGs. I'll leave it there. I don't know if colleagues want to add anything. UNDESA · Senior Economic Affairs Officer · Peter Tchala [57:17]: I think a topic Stephanie may want to speak about because I know she's very interested in this, that there is a big section in the Sphere Commitment on public development banks. banks. And so I think it's really important to emphasize that it's not just intergovernmental or multilateral development banks. You may have heard of the World Bank, you may have heard of, you know, the African Development Bank, but there are a very large number and an increasing number of national development banks. And there, and this is one of the really success stories, I think, of the last 10 years, is that we've seen more countries setting up development banks at the national level or sometimes even subnational level. And those development banks having really strong sustainable development impact because they can be aligned better with sustainability policies and with the aims of countries to, for example, to invest in climate change mitigation, to invest in clean energy, etc. And so this is a real area where you don't even have to wait for the international system. Governments can do this themselves. But then the push from the Suiza Commitment is that the international system should be supporting Okay, thank you. UN · Member, UN High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs · Stephanie Griffith-Jones [58:30]: If I may, I totally agree with Peter. I think that in total, if you take the whole system of public development banks, they actually lend— the stock of lending is over $23 trillion, and so they are financing about 10% of world investment. So they're really important actors. And one of the big advantages which they have, additional to the ones that Peter mentioned, is that they can leverage scarce public resources because the government finances the capital of the development bank, but then the development bank can go and borrow on the international or national capital markets. Use that borrowed money to make more loans. And it can even co-finance these loans with the private sector, but with the advantage that they are leading, as Peter was saying, to lend to projects that have national priority, that have priorities like clean energy or electromobility Or a number of these effects. And of course, these are multilateral regional development banks like the Inter-American or the African or the Asian Development Bank. And then also, most importantly, the national development banks. And as Peter said, this is something that emerging and developing countries can do by themselves, and in fact are doing, to create these development banks and enlarge them where possible, because that is one way of leveraging finance. And it is a way that actually also favors in some ways the private sector. And finally, they can also showcase investment. Many, for example, renewable energy, solar energy in Germany was introduced and exclusively financed by the public development bank called KfW, and then the private sector followed. But it may be necessary even to show the profitability, and this is even more important in poorer countries, like in low-income countries, where development banks, hopefully also with support from the international community, can do this. UNDESA · Sustainable Development Officer · Ariel Alexievich [1:00:55]: Thank you. Thank you, Stephanie. I want to switch gears a little bit and take 2 questions at once. They're linked a little bit. We have David, who is asking, well, saying, many tropical states are exposed to high climate risk, highly indebted, and ineligible for concessional finance. How do they improve their citizens' well-being in these conditions? And that ties to another question I have on what role does policy coherence play in development finance, where funding to certain sectors like industry may sometimes undermine ambitions of others like climate finance. So, would anyone like to take that on? This, you know, this tension between the climate finance and other parts? All right. If we— Sure, please, over to you, Cecilia. UNDESA · Economic Affairs Officer · Cecilia Keo [1:01:59]: Just to say a couple of things, because I think it's actually quite exciting that it became a sort of more explicit component of the FFD agenda in a way. The FFD agenda is very broad and it's always been sort of coherent, trying to coherently look at all of the elements, but one of the things that the Sevilla Commitment does now is that it elevates policy coherence among the core principles for effective development cooperation. So this is essentially recognizing exactly what the person asking the question was raising. And there's a couple of specific issues in the document on what development partners can do to sort of integrate this in every intervention. So I think that's just worth noting. And on SIDS, I can't speak to this in a lot of detail, but again, there— it's an issue that we'll probably explore in a little bit more detail next year. But even in this year's report, you can see sort of a summary of how criteria to access concessional finance are already shifting, and with this whole sort of push to go beyond GDP and incorporate multidimensional vulnerability a bit more. So watch this space, basically, for that part. UNDESA · Sustainable Development Officer · Ariel Alexievich [1:03:32]: Yes, thank you for that. And just on a note that our reports are regular here, so you will address that in the future. UNDESA · Senior Economic Affairs Officer · Peter Tchala [1:03:41]: And let me say another topic that will be on next year's agenda for the report in terms of the first question, which is about how tropical states that are highly indebted can do things. One of the big initiatives in Sevilla was to improve the availability of a debt swap. So that's one of the instruments countries are thinking about using in terms of which doesn't require necessarily concessional finance, but it involves a highly indebted country, but which is solvent, but perhaps not able to, you know, not able to borrow more because of the liquidity problems they're facing, to change the tenor or duration of their existing debt instruments or swap them for certain programs or commitments on doing decarbonization or investments in resilience. So these kind of instruments have been used. There's increasing interest in them. They're not for everybody. They're not a silver bullet, but it's one of the kind of instruments that some countries who are in that kind of situation can use in order to be able to invest in resilience, for example, in sort of building better— sort of, let's say you're a tropical state and you're in a situation where you might face hurricanes or something like this, typhoons, you might be able to swap some of your debt in order to exchange for investments in sort of infrastructure resilience, for example. So that's one instrument. The second one I'm going to mention, it's not yet operational, but I know there's a strong effort to set up a new development bank. We're back to development banks, but one that specifically focuses on countries that are predominantly small island developing states to invest in resilience for them. And it's this new development bank will focus on how you better leverage the natural capital that countries already have. There'll be a side event on that next week during the FFD Forum. It's an effort being set up by a number of Caribbean and Pacific small island developing states to set up this new development Bank. So that's another kind of thing you can do in this situation. UNDESA · Sustainable Development Officer · Ariel Alexievich [1:05:57]: Excellent. Thank you for those suggestions, Peter. UN · Member, UN High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs · Stephanie Griffith-Jones [1:06:00]: If I may, just one small point, developing the point that Peter made so nicely. I think these debt— these climate resilience clauses in debt service are an example of how the international community, without necessarily putting in more money, can respond to frequent shocks. In this case, a climate shock, but it can be also a commodity price shock. For example, in the past, actually, the IMF had compensatory financing facility when countries, the price of their main exports would fall, they would get often a low conditionality loan. Unfortunately, that facility does not exist anymore. But I think the whole thinking about how you protect countries from, from the shocks, how you build their resilience to it, hopefully with that finance, but also how you give them short-term liquidity support in the face of shocks which they cannot really meet because they don't have the fiscal space or the reserves to face it, are increasingly important as the number of shocks grow and multiply. UNDESA · Sustainable Development Officer · Ariel Alexievich [1:07:14]: Thank you. Thank you, Stephanie. All right, so we are getting some questions related to specifically— people are raising the idea, the concept of leave no one behind, which is really at the heart of SDGs. And I have Michael here in Zoom who is asking how international finance can be targeted to specifically towards populations most, most at risk of being left behind? And also connected to Faustina's question about how this, our current global situation, may have seen some removal recently of diversity, equity, inclusion resources, especially in the private sector. How do we get their support if, if their, you know, alignment has changed a little bit? And it also ties to Elise in Berkeley who is asking, how can international institutions help states to take action aligned with everything in the FSDR and the Sevilla Commitment when there seems to be some unwillingness to do so? So I bring those questions together to get probably your final thoughts as we are closing on our end time here about how to progress in this current climate, whether it's in the business sector or in the public sector. That's a big one. Who would like to take that first? UN · Member, UN High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs · Stephanie Griffith-Jones [1:08:45]: Well, I think this is, if I may, particularly challenging because particularly the first question, which is how you can challenge— channel, sorry, more funds to the poorer countries and the poorer people also in middle-income countries, because we mustn't forget that even middle-income countries have a large number of poor people. And so it's important to reach them. And here it is more difficult to channel private finance towards it. And so therefore the need for public flows, preferably concessional flows where possible, is absolutely, I think, essential. And I think it's difficult because the international community is exactly stepping away from these commitments, and hopefully it will come back to making them. And at the national level, of course, there is policy space for doing that. For example, If you increase tax, particularly on the richer segment of the population and on the large companies, international companies, doing it in ways that doesn't discourage them to invest, but increasing taxation, because for example, the OECD countries tax much more than emerging and developing countries, and use some of those resources to improve the living standards and the basic needs of of the poorer people in the population. You can also, I think, do things through development models. If you have a model that also encourages the development and the increased productivity of small and medium enterprises and provide them with finance, which I think is also discussed in your report, that may also provide a more inclusive pattern of development. that will provide more jobs and therefore help people who before were unemployed. Just some ideas. UNDESA · Sustainable Development Officer · Ariel Alexievich [1:10:48]: Thank you. Peter? UNDESA · Economic Affairs Officer · Cecilia Keo [1:10:51]: Yeah, okay, I'll just add one thing. So we have this framework at the UN, it's called Integrated National financing frameworks. And it's exactly what Stephanie was saying, when we get to the country level, there, in the end, the sort of integrating the Leave No One Behind spirit, and in every single financing choice that you make, in the end boils down to who's around the table, and the questions that you ask, and whether you have the right people to to answer them. So in basically the INFF, which is a very bad acronym that came out, we love acronyms at the UN. So it's basically the idea of having, involving all of the actors nationally that have something that would be able to address the social, environmental, and economic dimensions of every choice that you make. So this means that, for example, when the IMF might come and suggest austerity measures, there's something— there's someone around the table that can ask about the potential implications on poverty numbers. Or as Stephanie was already mentioning, if you're considering some private investment promotion strategies or measures, have you thought about whether maybe cutting taxes is gonna undermine social or environmental outcomes that you have in mind to achieve. So I think that's one approach that could be sort of used at the country level. And then the Sevilla Commitment, especially in relation to the involvement of civil society specifically, as well as all of the relevant actors, calls for basically strengthening coordination at the country level. So in government-led coordination mechanisms that would involve the private sector, all of the relevant ministries, public development banks if they're there, civil society of course, and academia and UN agencies, agencies and the development partners there. And indeed, this can be sort of the platform where the people that can answer those questions around financial choices can be drawn from. So maybe, yeah, just those 2 things. Great. UNDESA · Sustainable Development Officer · Ariel Alexievich [1:13:30]: Yes, thank you very much for that, Cecilia. And I think I also would just like to acknowledge that we've gotten a lot of questions from our audience related to youth engagement with the UN on finance and on other development-related issues. Mary Sheila in Uganda and Fambo in Cameroon and other audience members, we hear you, we see you. And I do want to just mention that the ECOSOC Youth Forum is happening right now at the UN through today, I believe. And you'll find information about that if you go to un.org/ We have a youth team within DESA, but then there is also the wider UN Youth Office that does a lot of engagement on that. And Peter, did you want to come in on that? UNDESA · Senior Economic Affairs Officer · Peter Tchala [1:14:18]: Just to say that there is a very strong civil society engagement in the Financing for Development process, and the Major Group on Children and Youth, which participates in overall SDG engagement, has started very strongly engaging on the FFD process. So we're— we very much welcome the engagement of youth in the FFD process. Please, you know, if you're not already connected with those networks on the children and youth that participate in the UN, there are networks out there. Please engage with them, and we'd love to hear your voices at the FFD Forum. Next week is a little soon. Probably you can't make it to New York if you're not already planning, but in the future. UNDESA · Sustainable Development Officer · Ariel Alexievich [1:14:56]: Excellent. Thank you. Great positive note to end our discussion on. So I would just really like to say another thank you so much to our speakers. Unfortunately, we are out of time, so we'll have to leave it there. But just a reminder that you can explore the information in the new Financing for Sustainable Development Report 2026 by going to un.org/desa. That's also where you will find information about the Financing Forum and the SDG Investment Fair happening next week. That website also has information about the High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs, which Stephanie is a part of, which will be meeting next month in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and we'll be having a hybrid event, Global Policy Dialogue, there on the 8th of May, and we'll share details with our lists and on our website again, so stay tuned for that. So that is it, folks. A big thank you to UN Academic Impact and our colleagues at UN TV for their production support, and have a wonderful rest of the day or night depending on where you are in the world. We hope to see you again. So for me and the rest of the team, goodbye for now.