From Shock to Resilience: Supporting Developing Countries Through Compounding Crises | Goals Lounge

Excellency, colleagues, partners, and friends, good morning and welcome to Goals Lounge. When we created the Goals Lounge, our vision was simple, to create a space where people come together from institutions, sectors, and different perspectives. Together, we can build connections, spark ideas, and strengthen the partnerships needed to keep the promise of the Sustainable Development Goals. Today's discussion is a perfect example of why such conversations matter. The theme of this session, "From Shock to Resilience," reflects the reality facing many developing countries today. Climate shocks, economic volatility, conflict, food insecurity, and fiscal pressures are no longer isolated challenges. They're converging and compounding, making sustainable development more difficult and more urgent than ever. But if these crises are interconnected, our responses must also be. No single government, institution, or UN entity can address these challenges alone. So thank you all for being here and for contributing your ideas, your experience, and leadership. And now it's my great pleasure to introduce our moderator, Lisa Kerbel, head of the Joint SDG Fund, who will guide us through today's conversation. Lisa, welcome to Goals Lounge. Nice to have you back.

Thank you so much, Andrew.

Excellencies, distinguished participants, colleagues, dear friends, my name is Lisa Kerbel. I'm privileged to be here as moderator of this event. and slight representation of the Joint SDG Fund, the development system's premier financing instrument. This high-level event today is to focus on a critical issue and takes us from the conversation of the shock to resilience and how we are supporting developing countries through compounding crises. We meet at a time when these crises have become the operating context for development. And at the center of today's conversation are countries and communities making very difficult and life impacting decisions under extraordinary pressure. Climate shocks, food energy price volatility, disrupted supply chains and trade routes, tighter financing conditions and growing fiscal pressures are increasingly interacting rather than occurring in isolation. The spillovers of the Middle East crisis are showing how that, plus the impacts of the El Nino crisis, are impacting countries, sectors, systems. They're affecting livelihoods, families, mothers, children, our public services to serve them, and the governments, of course, capacity to finance and support them. For countries already confronting constrained fiscal space, debt displacement, fragility, and acute food insecurity, these overlapping challenges put hard-won development gains of our SDGs at tremendous risk. That interconnected reality calls for an integrated response. Fragmented support adds to the burden. Integrated support, by contrast, connects analysis with implementation, reduces transaction costs, and supports governments better by sequencing policy, financing, and operational choices around their own national priorities, governments driving the agenda. This event, co-hosted by the UN Development Coordination Office and the UN Development Program, therefore asks a practical and urgent question of some of our most respected senior leaders of the organization. How can the international system help countries move from managing successive shocks to building durable resilience and accelerating progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals? Today, we will hear first from countries on their perspectives and challenges. We will then examine emerging findings from UN support at country level before opening an interactive dialogue where we hope to have member states, international financial institutions, and UN entities weigh in with some reflections and guidance. Throughout, I will invite participants to help us answer three questions. Number one, what does sustainable development require in this new era? when countries face compounded geopolitical, climate, food, energy, financing, and fiscal shocks? Number two, how must the international system, all of us, how must all of us deliver more integrated political, humanitarian, development, and financing responses? And three, have we learned anything? What lessons from current responses can strengthen future UN support for countries facing these cascading development risks? We are ambitious. We are audacious. Our ambition should be to leave this room with a clear sense of what can be done differently, what can be brought to scale, and how short-term actions should be, must build durable resilience and renewed SDG progress. It is my absolute honor and pleasure to introduce now the United Nations Deputy Secretary General, Ms. Amina Mohammed, and Administrator of the UN Development Program, Mr. Alexander de Crew. You are most welcome to join me on stage.

Thanks.

Are you coming from there?

Okay.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you. Sir, Excellencies, to help frame our conversation, I'll go first to you, Deputy Secretary General. As I just mentioned, compounding crises are becoming the new normal for development. From your perspective, what is fundamentally different about today's development landscape?

Okay, no pressure. Well, I think what we're seeing today is not that there are any more necessarily crises that we've had to deal with over the years, But we are seeing an acceleration, we are seeing no borders, and we are seeing a lack of a political response that is sufficient to get ahead of them. And what's the context? Context, multilateralism in itself is being undermined, not necessarily just the resources that we've seen, nevertheless. but actually the values, the principles that we've held to frame many of the investments and the discussions and partnerships, treaties, frameworks that we have. And that's a struggle when suddenly that's no longer at the center. Is it a lack of trust in institutions and governments and democracies taking its toll? That has a real effect here. So that is different. We have got more autocracies than we have democracies today in the world, and that should tell us something. and we have less young people voting than we've had in the past. So I think the multilateral system and what happens around its governance is a really big challenge and it is different. It's never been this tested. The second are the shocks. And I think that, you know, many crises over the years, but The shocks that we have had are just that. No one expected COVID, that you would suddenly shut down the world for that number of years and not have the response for everyone. But it was a global shock, and I think that being unable as a system to respond to that. And what was different, it crossed borders. It didn't matter who you were. As Dr. Tedros said this morning, no one is safe. Everyone is not safe unless everyone is safe. I mean, if you just take one part of the world, the other part of the world's got to be safe, otherwise you're all in trouble. We can see that with Ebola. We can see that with COVID. The second shock for us, I think, was no one ever believed there'd be a war in this time in the Ukraine. just was not possible to believe that that would happen. And I think the shock to the system, the shock to Europe was its reaction because everyone suddenly looked inward and we were very much struggling with a world that was so interconnected, seeing a withdrawal because there was a very big problem and still is in Europe. So that was, again, different for us that this was not something that was expected to happen in Europe. The third shock, I think, has been one to the Middle East crisis. And in each of these shocks, Ukraine, Iran, they've demonstrated how connected we are and the impacts of what happens in one part of the world hits us on food security, hits us on remittances, hits us on energy security. And this actually has an impact on the table. supply chains, all of these from production to the table in homes around the world have been affected. There you go, no borders. So one to the other. The third that I think has perhaps been the biggest shock and again, a shock that in places where they have not seen the level of temperature rises, the level of sea level rise, these are shocks that cross borders as well, climate. And we cannot continue to underscore more how important it is to address them. So today, different, we have shocks crossing borders, not the adequate response that is needed for us to deal with them, particularly for development, for human rights.

Thank you so much, Jisji. Administrator, I'll turn to you. UNDP is supporting countries on the front lines. What are you seeing on the ground and what lessons are emerging about how countries are managing shocks to building resilience?

So two elements. I think first of all on the magnitude and then on the answer. So first on the magnitude, when we did our first socioeconomic impact analysis in March, That was a regional crisis. It was just in the region of the Gulf, and we saw immediately the impact on people that just lifted out of poverty that were being pushed back into it. Then we did an analysis again in June, and then you saw that this was way more. It was also fertilizers, it was energy prices, and ripple effects started to go way, way broader, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and so on. We now did another analysis in September, and now you see that this is impacting more than 100 economies, and it's impacting on a full cost of living crisis of full accessibility to energy prices. And the last element is that those crises now are compounding. See that what is happening in the Gulf region is being compounded to what is happening in Gaza, is linking to what is happening in Ukraine, and is coming to something which is more than the sum of the different crises. And if you then add super El Nino, which we are almost certain will have very large impact. And then third element is what is happening in the bond markets. The bond yields are going up, the cost for governments to finance fiscal deficits It's becoming really high if no crisis happens and we don't know what is going to happen. And that is important to my second part of the answer on how have countries responded. So from the start, we warned, from the start, for an impact of more than 30 million people being pushed into poverty. Some people might say, well, that didn't happen. And it's true, it didn't happen at the full extent because countries did intervene. And countries intervened, some of them did it targeted, some did it through blanket measures, there's always political realities combined to that. But at which costs? At a gigantic cost of finances which was meant to be used for something else. And these finances were meant to be used to invest in education in some countries, to invest in renewable energy investments. So a lot of money which was investment to the longer term has been used in just compensating in the day to day. There's a limit to how far you can go there. And if you look at the fiscal deficits, countries has gone up, debt levels have gone up, cost of financing has gone up for many, many different for many different reasons. So we start now to come at a point where I mean, this is the limits of the system. At the same time, we know that a lot of the fossil fuel reserves have been used up. So a lot of the buffers that we could have, which should have been used for something else, but also coming to their limits. So we are at a moment where, I mean, countries, and then we could say, well, you know, international community, I mean, international communities, it's countries, it's political leaders at some point, need to start looking at the basics. And basic number one is, you know, there's too many conflicts. There's just too many conflicts and there's not enough talking about ways of at least pausing those conflicts or resolving those conflicts. And often there's a level of cynicism on initiatives of bringing peace. I mean, peace and less conflicts is the basis of everything. But even if in some of those conflicts were stopped today, you still will need quite some new liquidity being brought into the system because the ripple effects will keep going for some time.

Excellent. You know, the domino effect of so much of what you're describing and the cascading how governments are responding is almost pointing to, well, when will we reach the last domino? And so I go back, Baby, to you, Deputy Secretary General, you know, we are in this new development landscape. You highlighted these crises. What does this mean for the future of international development? Your legacy will take us forward, you know, beyond your term, and what support will it provide to governments in the world?

Right, okay. I think that we've already started to recognize that as an organization with the crisis, the reality of what the context is that we're living in, we need to do things differently and we cannot continue to do them the same way we did for 80 years. That's hard because we are institutions and These are public servants who have done things one way for a very long time. For us in the development side, where I think we're about 42 agencies, funds and programs, UNDP leads on that development, but all these specialized agencies that come in, we need to respond differently with what is required on the ground. We have the frameworks. I think, you know, the toolbox is pretty full. We just need to deploy them differently. We have the framing of the SDGs and sustainable development will continue way past 2030. The goals might be different and give us different sort of arrows as to where the big issues are, but we need to be able to do things differently. Not just the UN system and its agencies, funds and programs here and on the ground, but also the way countries look at things and that integrated response. It's not a, let me have a project for women and let me have a project for youth. It's no, let me have a food security program that impacts the lives of women and children and young people in the jobs, the way we design it. And that capacity, I think, has to come to the country level to understand that better. So we need to improve the institutional muscle of countries to be able to do that. When you go to the finance sector, they're asking for scale. The economies of scale is what they need, and that's what they can fund, and that's where you can then organize your whole framing around de-risking and what you do there. So It's institutions like ours, it's national institutions. It's also because we have framed a development discourse over the years of putting people in silos. It's also civil society. It's everyone coming to the game to really understand what sustainable development means. It's not just 17 goals, it's a way of doing business and really putting the emphasis on the core, which are inclusive economies. I will say that there is one thing we didn't have in our means of implementation toolbox in 2015 when we gaveled, and it's here now, and it's here in a way that it either will be a distraction or it will help us, and that's AI and this new era of technology. We can't continue to think of it as an add-on. It is a mainstream event that is happening, and it's happening at such a speed that we're all trying to grapple with it. The UN has been able to bring in the science, has been able to bring in the governance, has been able to bring in the dialogue, the conversation around it, what it means to be human in the era of AI. But we're not yet applying that to how we work and the response of the reforms that are going to be needed. And maybe don't use the word reform because people are allergic to it. reset to be more responsive to what countries need on the ground, not what we think they need, because quite frankly, Africa, which is usually the one place we go to, is already going ahead. That we can't measure what's happening is because a lot of it's in the informal sector, and we're not getting the data that's there to tell us. let me just say that we have started. UNDP have been at the helm of the response that we've had on the development side to what is happening in the Middle East, working with our resident coordinators on the ground to provide a huge amount of analysis together with other specialized agencies. I can see FAO is here, but it is also UNCTAD, it is also other specialized agencies in a way that provides that analysis that Alex is talking about, without which we would not know where to be more focused on the investments that need to go. So let's rethink how we do development in terms of its response and the capacities and expertise that's needed and the means of implementation. We have to leverage this new era of technology. It will change things rapidly from what we do with urbanization to health to education. And let's look for how we can get the 4 trillion that we need for the SDGs. It's a It's not a new discourse, right? People are telling us that public resources are scarce and so we shouldn't count on them. But I'm just not sure what the $2.7 trillion is that we spend on war. Is that private sector? Is that public sector?

Thank you, Deputy Secretary General. And finally, Administrator, going back to you, as we prepare to hear directly from the member states, what does success or what should success look like? What outcomes should we collectively agree upon, be aiming for if we truly want to move from shock to resilience.

There is a new development model which is slowly emerging, which does not mean that the previous one was wrong. The previous one has been quite successful. But times have changed. So the world has changed. So there's a different answer to that. And that is one where in development, the leadership is firmly in the hands of the partner countries with whom we work. They set the political direction. They also have the operational leadership in doing it. And UN agencies and others are a partner in achieving that. The financing is broadened, and I think the Seville conference was really, really instrumental in showing that public money-- you said you can't count on public money. We will count on public money, less of it, that is clear, but public money plays a more catalytic role in doing the boundary reforms that are sometimes needed to get other types of financing going. Mobilizing domestic resources is a big one. I mean, in many of the, if you take the LDCs today, more than half of the LDCs have a state budget that is less than 15% of GDP, 15, one five. I'm not saying that they should pump it up to the levels of some of the European countries, but if you only collect 15% of the economy being generated in your country, well, it's hard to finance your development with that. And in any of those places, there are people making money. There's nothing wrong with making money as long as you pay a fair contribution on the activity that you've had there. So collecting taxes, mobilizing the receipts from, for example, natural resources to the benefit of population. better organizing remittances, getting closer to the international financial institutions. UNDP has signed a framework agreement with the World Bank and seeing how we can bring the best that we have to the table. We're not competitors. We bring something different to the table. As the DSG said, technology is a huge accelerator. We're a big believer in AI as an accelerator of development. But we shouldn't be blind for the geopolitics that is linked to it as well, and we need to strengthen governments in. in managing that. So you see that those elements are emerging. It's a different way of working. It will require us as UN development organizations to be much better integrated and UNHCR is a great first step in achieving that. So as always, crisis like this, yes, there is a downside and managing that downside is a difficult one, but this is a moment where we take a leap forward and you see the elements are on the table. Linking those pieces of the puzzle is what is happening at this moment.

Let me just say something about sustainable development. We wouldn't be doing this if countries had the foundations and were building very quickly. Many of these countries don't have foundations. And I will give the analogy of 1945, '46, when countries were coming out of a terrible world war, and they were decimated. The international community found the wherewithal to give long-term concessional financing without batting an eyelid. And yet today we're discussing the same devastation, whether it's the impacts of COVID or it is the impacts of other global crises that are not created by developing countries. I think that the international community has to find a way to adjust the financial architecture that we have to allow for long-term concessional funding for countries to begin to build. We cannot ask them to do things when they have no foundations. You cannot ask people to transition on energy when you don't have base load for industrialization. This is absolute nonsense. So these transitions are scale and they are huge resources, whether it's for regulatory work and policy work, or it's the actual investments in the infrastructure that is needed. That's a serious discussion. That's the four trillion that we're speaking to. And you cannot now expect that countries will accelerate or will even find the domestic resource base to do this because there is no economy. Economies come from when you have laid down the infrastructure of power, of water, of all the necessities that everyone else has had in order to grow. And I think that this is, there is a, there's a double standard here that needs to be addressed. and that's in the financial architecture. There are no countries asking for handouts anymore. So whether public funds become catalytic or not really doesn't matter. I think what we really need is for credit rating agencies to understand they cannot put risk ratings against countries that they haven't been hardly visited. that we are looking at finding ways to, you know, the UN system to do things differently by helping to create a better market environment so then we can attract the investment that comes in. But frankly, this is a question of whether we are, we've got the political will in the world to attain the sustainable development agenda, which is not MDGs. It's a conceptual paradigm shift to ask us about our inclusive economies, revenues out of that that will pay for the first six, that we're not going for ODA to pay for health and education, which is impossible, and that we're taking governance and we're taking climate into consideration. I think this is a very serious question. We'll continue to be incremental. If you see a pushback, half of that pushback is because we didn't do the investments that were required. And I think that's what we need to be speaking about. I think domestic resources are fundamental and they will be what make it sustainable. But for it to get to be sustainable, they have to have foundations. Those foundations in many countries are not there.

Thank you so much to both of you, Deputy Secretary General, Administrator, for setting the stage for the remainder of our conversation and for your leadership. Thank you so much. So colleagues, we're now going to be turning to the country level. In this first round, I will be inviting each speaker to describe how compounding shocks are affecting their national priorities. And in the second, we'll look ahead to the policies, the investments, the partnerships that they're already launching to build their own resilience. I'm pleased to begin by inviting Ms. Cecilia Adot Majok Adeng, South Sudan's Minister of Foreign Affairs. You are most welcome. You can maybe join me here on this side. Such a pleasure. Welcome, welcome. And next, I invite Mr. Amr El Shorabey, Egypt's assistant minister of foreign affairs. You are welcome. Perhaps he's on his way. And I also welcome UN director general of Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Amr Sadiq. Wonderful. Good. Yeah, please. You can join us there. Actually, Minister, why don't you-- you can go on that side. Sorry, I didn't realize the seating will change. Very good. So, Minister, really an honor and a privilege to have you with us today. I'll take the first question to you. South Sudan faces overlapping pressures from conflict, displacement, climate shocks, food insecurity, fiscal constraints. How do you see these shocks interacting and which national development priorities do you see under the most strain?

Good morning to all of you and thank you for having us here. And thank you for this critical questions. I think what is particularly difficult for South Sudan today is that these shocks do not occur separately. They are intact and they follow each other and the more difficult to manage. Let me give you a concrete example. Destruction of our oil exports, which contributed to about 46 to 50% of our national budget deficit. sharply reducing government's revenue. And essentially, at the same time, the conflict in neighboring Sudan brought refugees and large number of South Sudanese returnees across our borders, increasing pressure on communities that are already stretched with basic services. We are also feeling the wider impact of the conflict in the Middle East through pressures on energy markets, trade, and supply chains. For a landlocked country such as South Sudan, higher fuel prices and transportation costs quickly impact the cost of food prices in our market and the essential goods. Then we have the recurring floods and droughts. These, in fact, also affect our-- have an impact on our agriculture and food security, displace communities, and undermine livelihoods. Often in the same time, the communities they are going to already affected by their own displacement or conflict or short terms of underdevelopment. So the greater strain is on our ability to maintain the basic services and institutions and continuing to invest on longer term development. But despite all of these pressures, South Sudan continue to make progress. We're working with development partners and humanitarian partners and national and national partners to reduce and remain and reduce the above 1.5 million metric tons in 2025. More than 2 million people access essential health services and over 2,992 children were transferred to severe acute malnutrition centers. We are also continuing to invest in livelihoods and local economic opportunities. For example, UNDP Programs alone have trained over 30,000 young people in vocational skills, and almost about 24,000 of those have gone to generate incomes. And we continue to strengthen peace and local institutions because resilience is also about enabling the communities to be able to take care of their own communities and take peace as a priority. So for South Sudan, the challenge is not simply reducing or responding to several emergencies at once. It is about protecting development gains while responding to them. And that's why our message is simple. Development cannot wait for crisis to end. We must address immediate needs while continuing to invest in food production, livelihood, basic service, institutional and peace, and make sure that the next shock is addressed before it comes back. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Thank you very much. I'll now turn to Pakistan, also facing successive climate, economic and social shocks. This doesn't seem to be unique to the speakers on our panel today. How have these pressures affected vulnerable populations in Pakistan, the progress for your country to the SDGs, and what immediate responses are proving most effective in your country? Over to you.

Thank you very much. First of all, it's a great pleasure to be here in this wonderful setting, and I was listening to remarks made by the Deputy Secretary General and also by the UN Administrator. And I would like to commend all the efforts that they're making across the world, touching millions of lives, including in Pakistan. And the work is really making a lot of difference on ground. The challenge with shocks that we continue to face in many parts of the world, including in Pakistan, is that you can never prepare enough for them. Every time, every shock brings with it its own unique challenges and the kind of responses which are required. COVID-19 was mentioned in the conversations that we had at the start of this discussion. Subsequently, when we came out of it, we in Pakistan faced devastating floods in 2022, which estimated an estimated cost of $30 billion of damages and lots of lives uprooted as a result of those floods. And most recently, we're facing this unprecedented political challenge in our own region, which has resulted in energy crisis across the world, and it is impacting millions of lives, not only across the world, but also in Pakistan. I think for us, three things very important in terms of responding to some of these shocks. The first is how quickly we are able to address the factors which are resulting in these shocks in the first place. The conflict was mentioned over here, mediation, conflict prevention. I think in instances where shocks are created by such political instability, first and foremost response of the international community should be to help in addressing the causes of those conflict across the world. And that's exactly what Pakistan has tried to do in the recent months in terms of its mediation efforts in its own region. When it comes to the impact of the climate related disasters in Pakistan, we've invested a lot in early warning. Today, Pakistan's capital is connected down to the district level in terms of early warning systems so that we are able to move over people out of the harm's way. Secondly, we have tried to focus on addressing the challenges being faced by the populations which are most vulnerable. We have a very comprehensive social development program in the form of Benezit income support program that tries to go down to the grassroots levels to address the challenges being faced by the most vulnerable communities, especially in case of disaster related challenges. Most recently, as a result of the fuel shock that we're facing, we have started almost a $270 million worth of subsidy as a fuel relief scheme for the most vulnerable people in our society. But the question as was raised in the initial remarks was, How sustainable would that be? So for us, it's very important that we work very closely with development partners like UNDP to adapt our development priorities in order to address these shocks in a way which are not only sustainable, but also help address the most vulnerable populations.

Excellent. Thank you so much. Thrilled to hear about the efforts to reach the last mile and also the progressive subsidies. And a larger question for so many in the room are, how long can those progressive subsidies be sustained, right? That's the fiscal space challenge that many are facing. I'm going to go back to you, Minister. You've given us a quite the diagnosis, right, of the many challenges that are facing South Sudan. And now what we're looking for as we look forward to the next steps, to so many in the room that are part of wanting to support the solutions, what do you see making the greatest difference going forward? What national systems, what livelihood investments should South Sudan prioritize under your leadership to reduce the reliance on repeated emergency responses? And what do you need from partners? What would be your call to action for so many that are in the room today, but also will watch this online, will see this in another fora? So the floor is yours.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I think for me, I will highlight three priorities, and it's been very noted throughout the week as we've gone through a few high-level meetings. One is we need to strengthen national system and institutions so that South Sudan can anticipate and respond better to shocks. This means stronger public financial management, better data and planning, and stronger healthcare systems. Our government has contributed 5 million over five years to public financial management reforms, including an initial 1 million contribution. We are also taking immediate measures to manage some of the external shocks I mentioned with the Middle East related supply disruption contributing to higher fuel and transport costs. The government has established the High Level Committee on Economic Reforms, and it has taken measures to increase fuel supplies and open markets to additional qualifying market and importers and to stabilize the prices. But the longer term answer is reduce our vulnerable to external shocks. That is my second priority, investing in domestic production and livelihoods. We need to produce more of our own food and strengthen our agriculture and value chains and expand opportunities for younger people, women and small businesses. My government is increasingly positioning agriculture as a driver of economic diversification and reduce dependency on oil and imports. Third, we need to invest to solve the several problems at the same time. Clean energy is a good example. The UNDP and the Global Fund have established two health facilities, institutions that are solarized. They have all been solarized now, reducing dependency on costly diesels. And the same approach can support irrigation, cold storage, agro-processing, and small entrepreneurs. And for our partners, we need predictable and flexible long-term development financing, alongside humanitarian support. Financing that strengthen national systems rather than creating parallel ones. And for South Sudan, resilience must move beyond from repeatedly responding to emergencies to investing in the next shock. So working with us and finding the best way and using the technology at hand to support us to respond to some of these shocks would be of great importance.

Fantastic. So wonderful, Minister. Thank you so much. So, colleagues, you've heard that the leadership of South Sudan is ready to invest long term. They're ready to build up their agro systems. The opportunities are there. The development system is there to de-risk it. This is an an opportunity to change what has been a successive series of crises. So thank you so much. I think that's very clear. I think it's now time to put those words into action. And we need the member states that are members of the General Assembly to use this UNGA 81 to really make that happen. We don't really need more rhetoric, colleagues. We need the reality on the ground. The future generation of South Sudan is ready to become an entrepreneur and ready to take on the challenges. Thank you so much. I'm going to go back to you, DG. You talked about many of the already in place progress, the responses, the rapidity, you said timing matters, we have to get the subsidies out to the vulnerable in real time. Do you see climate and development finance to be a way of aligning with some of your protecting what you have, but also anticipating this final domino that the administrator mentioned?

Absolutely. And too often we look at climate and development as two separate silos. I think for us it's very important to bring them all together. I mean, this is something that needs to be reflected in national planning as well, and also in a conversation with our development partners, including with the UN agencies that work on ground. We are glad that we are amongst those five countries who are going to be the pilot countries in context of COP 31 presidencies implementation bridge project. So we look forward towards having this greater integration down to the grassroots level and see how best it works for other people on ground. Secondly, I think it's very important that we have development finance that works better for the climate. Development finance needs to build climate-resilient development models on ground. And it's very important that we had some initial remarks mentioned some challenges which a lot of developing countries are facing as a result of asymmetries in the international financial architecture. It's very important that we have debt pauses built in some of these lending agreements, which help the vulnerable countries to address their debt servicing at a time when they're facing climate shocks as well. And likewise, it's very important that we have a climate finance that works best for the development. There's no point in having more debts do have climate financing. It's very important that we have grant based climate financing, additional and large, and the most vulnerable countries must be placed at the top in this regard.

Excellent, excellent. I think that's another opportunity to really look at some of the conversations on the wider IFI financing. I think you're echoing our Deputy Secretary General on the debt pauses. These are critical elements to make sure that we're not missing an opportunity to stop our ozone, to continue to deteriorate while we're trying to pay a debt that was never justly put in place in the first place. I'm delighted to thank both of you for being here with us today. I want to invite us to celebrate our panelists. And thank you so much. Pleasure to meet you. Pleasure to meet you, Gigi. Very good. So colleagues, we've heard today, we've been powerfully reminded about the power of resilience, not through isolated interventions, but of course, this policy framework, this wider ecosystem that connects policy, financing, implementation to national priorities. We've heard from government leaders, and now we have an opportunity to explore further what patterns are emerging. So it's my absolute pleasure to invite Helena Fraser of the Development Coordination Office of the United Nations and Francine Pickup of the UN Development Program. Colleagues, you are very, very welcome. You're here today to share evidence and emerging findings from country level support that you both lead and you lead it wonderfully. So Helena, I see the time, so I'm going to start with you right away. Helena, you lead the Policy Bureau of the Development Coordination Office. You work with UN Resident Coordinators. You are a former Resident Coordinator and you're working with UN country teams every day. What are you observing on the ground? What are the clearest findings emerging from countries? Over to you.

Thanks, Lisa. I think in an effort to really ensure that the UN system-wide response to this multi-poly crisis, multi-region poly crisis was coherent, focused, and really delivering what host country governments were seeking, together with UNDP, we surveyed all the country teams globally. And the findings were extremely clear. And you've heard it from lived experience from the preceding speakers. This is a multi-channel shock. This is not just about food. This is not just about fuel. It's transmitting through debt, livelihoods, essential services. And it's in an era of compounded shocks that are coming down the pipe. We're already preparing for the El Nino shock. We are seeing huge implications differentiated by region, but also a real global sustainable development stress test. And the governments around the world that we work with are taking measures to buffer their most vulnerable populations from the hardest impacts. They're taking a lot of immediate and often short-term measures. We heard some of them, fuel subsidies, tax cuts, price controls, cash top-ups. But the critical question is how to shield against tomorrow's crisis while buffering the response for the most vulnerable today. And that's the question that will really have a long-term perspective on whether we manage to advise and support governments to better shield against long-term sustainable development reversals. And I think the first speakers, the Deputy Secretary-General, the Administrator, were very clear on that. That's the role where the UN can share its global experience and try to support and advise around how to deal with today's extreme shock while building resilience for tomorrow.

Fabulous, Helena, very, very clear. I have a follow-up, maybe while you have the floor. You're working in so many contexts, and we've seen an example of different types of countries, even here this morning on our panel. How are you seeing the very impacts you're describing, these very challenges of trying to look ahead while you're literally holding the fire hose, so to speak, playing out differently across least developed countries, small island developing states, from the continent to crisis-affected settings, and how are these How are you seeing also the requests for support from the UN?

Thank you. Well, I mean, it's clear that no region is untouched, and living here in New York, I think we can also say, you know, no country is untouched. by the by the cascading impacts, but it is highly uneven. Many Asian economies are exposed specifically to energy shocks as the sort of primary focus. Many least developed countries are facing greater concern around food price exposure. One of the things that we're looking at also, though, as as the UN is how does it cascading to people and different communities, including those at most risk of being left behind? We look at African farmers. they're facing sharply higher fertilizer costs. Fuel and fertilizer in some African countries are up 300%. And of course, this is squeezing narrow margins for smallholder farmers while also reducing yields and leading to cascading food security challenges down the road in a year when we have, again, as I said, El Nino situation also coming down the track. In small island developing states, the impact is very, very deep. The energy shock is much broader. This cascades across electricity, transport, fertiliser, freight, fuel, you name it. And there the policy responses need to be tailored to that angle.

Excellent, Helena, thank you so much. Francine, I'll turn to you and back to the UN Development Program, where you're receiving requests daily from governments that are coming into the UN system. Where do you see country level support making the greatest difference?

So I think we need to talk about the different stages of this crisis, because when it started, if we look at March to August, we see that governments were relatively well managing the crisis. albeit at huge financial fiscal cost, right, through these containment strategies like subsidies, price caps, tax rebates, and so on. Okay, and so, you know, from our data, the countries that we've surveyed, 70% of the countries that we serve are employing these generalized containment strategies, right, at great expense. And when we look at the types of requests that we're getting, 50% of those are indeed for fiscal support, financial support, whether it be from the UN or from banks to pay for this, because it's a huge, huge cost. When we started out at the onset of this crisis, we published an analysis which said if oil were to rise to over $100 a barrel and the crisis were to continue, we estimated that 32 and 1/2 million people would fall into poverty. Actually, that didn't happen because governments responded so swiftly with those cushioning measures to absorb the impact. Now we're in a different situation. Now we see that oil has risen to over $100 a barrel, partly because of the additional disruptions that we see in the Red Sea as well. We also see the compounding effects of El Nino. We see bond market turbulence. And as a result of this triple shock, government strategies are changing. And these higher costs of fuel and food are being passed through. to domestic populations. And so people in over 130 countries are now, developing countries, are now seeing their fuel and food prices increase by 20 to 30%. And so we are seeing protests, social unrest in a number of countries. And so what governments are trying to do now is introduce temporary social protection, social cash transfers to mitigate those impacts. And as the UN, we are ready to pivot strategically with those governments to provide that support. And as Helena said, it's different, different needs. There's no one template, different needs in different countries. So in East, West Africa, in East Asia, you're seeing the disruptions to food supply chains from El Nino. In other countries, you're seeing lost remittances from the Gulf. In other countries, you're seeing, particularly in Asia, you're seeing fuel rationing. And Helena talked about the SIDS, which are so heavily dependent imports. So they're very, very affected. So we're engaging in all sorts of support. If I were to summarize, I think there is social protection support in terms of, for example, helping countries to develop their social and pharma registries to be shock responsive. A lot of the support is around financing and fiscal. So helping countries understand the impacts and then develop investment strategies to attract finance. then on food systems resilience, how to reduce dependency on external, and then particularly in places like small island developing states, support with renewable energy so that they don't, so they're not so externally dependent and they are more resilient.

Yeah, you've mapped out beautifully, Francine, how so many countries are indeed taking action, but I think in some countries, you may also be witnessing the cost of inaction. Can you speak a little bit about to the countries who might not have the capacity, the fiscal space to actually implement the types of responses that you've highlighted and what you see as the real risk of that?

So I think the costs of inaction have so far been invisible because countries have, for the most part, cushion the impact and stopped the kind of human development impact through these generalized containment measures that I mentioned. But moving forward, it won't be possible to keep those costs invisible. They will become visible. And so countries, governments are facing a fork in the road, right? One approach is to continue with the generalized containment measures, but that That's extremely expensive. We estimate that generalized containment will cost developing countries over $1 trillion this year alone. The alternative of temporary targeted cash transfers is also really expensive. It's additional cost. Again, we estimate it's going to cost in the hundreds of billions of dollars for developing countries. remember the peak of this crisis isn't now. This isn't going to end now. It's going to continue and we're probably looking at a peak to this crisis in early 2027. Mm hmm. Alright. So, these temporary targeted cash transfers may have to be longer and larger. Mm hmm. Um so, that's what we're looking at and so, I think what we're looking at and what as an international community we need to be ready for is a bigger debt crisis. Currently, our monitoring shows that 55 countries, developing countries, are spending more than 10% of their total revenue on servicing debt. And that's money that is not being spent on development. That 55 countries is up from 32 countries 10 years ago. So more countries are using their revenues to service debt. And so what we're moving into is an era of debt development trade off, where countries are being forced to choose to pay debt servicing over investments in human development, health, education, social protection, but also resilience building measures like food systems resilience or renewable energy. So you get into this vicious cycle of spending money on the shock and not being able to invest in the longer term. And so we really do need to look at this debt pause issue.

Excellent. Well, colleagues, thank you so, so much for being with us today. We really appreciate it. And we look forward to more collaboration and work with so many governments around the world. So some appreciation for our colleagues. And now we're moving into segment three, colleagues, which to me is the most exciting, I do run the Joint SDG Fund. shameless plug for the premier financing instrument for the SDGs, financing and partnerships for integrated crisis response. So we've heard from countries, we've heard from some of our policy gurus inside the UN system. This final dialogue is how we convert that diagnosis into financed coordinated action. And I'm going to be looking at some regional priorities. I'm going to be looking at some investment ready solutions. and some wider reforms. And I'm delighted that we have with us today the executive secretary of ESCWA. This is our economic commission led by Ms. Rania El Mashat. You're so, so welcome, Rania. And you're really focusing on the Arab region. What policy or investment choices do you see that would most reduce vulnerability to today's interconnected trade, energy, and fiscal shocks? And where is regional cooperation so indispensable?

Well, thank you so much for this and few points to make. Even though the crisis affects countries, it doesn't affect them equally. So if I look at the Arab region, we have nine out of the 22 are either in crisis and conflict or leaving conflict. So this means that, you know, the impact is even more. The second point is national solutions are useful, but regional solutions also provide the scale. Nonetheless, there is a need for investment in these regional solutions. Connectivity is not an infrastructure infrastructure choice, it's really a resilience choice, and that's something that we heard from previous speakers as well. So a few points to keep in mind when we are doing this regional work, we need to make sure that on a national side, countries are able to do the procurement, are able to articulate priorities, are able to sit down with partners. So there is a very important element of institutional recovery help and technical assistance there. The second point is making sure that all of us really have the conviction and belief that it's only through cooperation that we will get through this, that no country on its own can do it by itself. And when I say no country, it includes partners, institutions, the region, and any convening that can actually push forward. So just in terms of financing, which is very close to my heart, I would say government's commitment on what they need to do needs to be very clear. There needs to be clarity on what programs or projects they need. And then third, building that credibility among the different partners and different institutions. I think that's also going to get us a long way. Thank you.

Well, I'm really thrilled to have you at this position at Esquav because it's a great opportunity for the region. So you're bringing so much leadership from your previous positions with the government of Egypt, and we're really thrilled to have you today. Thank you so much, Rania. I'm sure you'll be available also to speak with some of our colleagues afterwards, so thank you. And I'd now love to hand the floor to Dr. Issafai, Director General, no, okay. I'd also like to invite our colleague from the UNCTAD, the, wonderful. So welcome Juan Jose Badillo. You are the Director of UNCTAD's New York office. We know that financing instruments alone cannot compensate for shrinking fiscal space and high debt service costs. How can countries address this debt development trade off that Francine and Helena and even DSG, so many of our speakers have pointed out, and how can we expand their ability to invest in resilience? Over to you.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I think the administrator actually painted a very clear picture in the trade off, basically. So the fundamental issue is crises, compounded crises are becoming more common, a common feature of the economy. So we have over the last year seen the crisis hit one after another. And in the meantime, as these shocks intensify, then we see ODA down, FDI to developing countries being stagnant, debt being increasingly expensive to service. And in reality, the kind of fiscal measures that Francine, the DSG, the administrator spoke about come from resources that stop going somewhere else or stop financing somewhere else, something else. And we see fiscal space shrinking. We ran some numbers that between 2018 and 2024, 99% 99 countries or 70 73% of developing countries face less fiscal space or had less fiscal space to deal with these issues. So What we're seeing then is precisely the moment when developing countries need more support, affordable financing and international assistance is severely constrained. So we're asking countries to become more resilient while at the same time the resources available to their resilience are shrinking. I think the issue of the impact of our MOU has been spoke about spoken about widely. I mean, we tend to think of the economy of this very digitalized and modern phenomenon, but in reality, a lot of the trade and the numbers are 70, 80% depending on how you count, goes through ships to maritime transport. So these disruptions can move very quickly through the economy. We have numbers that show that 61 vulnerable economies have been exposed to oil and cereal import shocks. I think colleagues Francine and Helena paint a very clear picture. FAO is warning that 45 million people, and that's the population of Canada, just to put it in perspective, face acute food insecurity. And the total number, in fact, is coming to over 300. 363 million people. And of course, we see the next shock around the corner with El Nino. I think also colleagues spoke about that, and that will have consequences both in terms of income to farmers, but also in terms of costs to households. I think we're going to come back with some specific proposals, but in reality, what we're seeing is That we should think beyond of the things that countries can do. Yes, absolutely. There are things that countries have to do in terms of macroeconomic frameworks, capacity to manage debt, optimizing debt portfolios. But we should think beyond in how the global safety net actually allows them to provide the fiscal measures without affecting the capacity to finance all the priorities.

Thank you so much. Wonderful to see the leadership of the UN Conference on Trade and Development so critically embedded in so much of this. It's another example of how the breadth and the expertise across the UN development systems from resident to non-resident agencies really are brought to a fore through that resident coordinator system and through that unity of force. These have been very rich and thoughtful discussions. The discussions have highlighted this global crisis, its impact, of course, all the way down to the household level. And I think the fact that so many countries are being highlighted today, both through the speakers, but through the data, through the surveys that have been done, are really reminding us of the fiscal space, the institutional capacity, how the exposure to conflict, climate, food, and energy, and trade shocks are really playing out on a daily basis. I think many of our speakers have reminded us that the choices are not simple. between acting, between reserving what scarce resources they may have, how progressive subsidies may be overtaken, and how the last domino may be in fact, effect falling. How long can we hold on? If the pinnacle of the crisis is in 2027, then we have a long way to go to continue to protect the most vulnerable, to keep nutrition and schools open, to keep clinics well supplied. We also learned a little bit today that inaction has a very high cost. and that will carry a much higher economic, social, environmental, and human cost. So how do we advocate collectively for debt pauses? How do we make sure that we're not just listening to that rhetoric, but really using our votes in the General Assembly, using our votes in the investment committees, and really making that change a reality? I think it's really all up to us. Wall Street isn't asking these questions. Private equity isn't answering these questions. We, the international community inside the UN, must take these messages to them and make it a reality. So that's the challenge, right? We're countries act early, making them better informed choices, protecting long-term development priorities, responding to the immediate pressures. This is the goal of so many in this room and beyond, and I'm really thrilled to have been a moderator here. It's my role now to invite UNDP Administrator for some closing remarks. You're welcome to join me here on the couch or stand as you'd like. So make yourself at home. Yeah.

Thank.

You, Laila. Thank really, really great, great discussion, trying to tackle something which I think for every individual country looks at something daunting that we can't handle on our own. And I think like a red trend that you saw through all the discussions here this week is that, I mean, countries value the fact of working together. I mean, in this world, you're better off having some good friends. I mean, being on your own, even as strong or as as rich or as stable as you think you are, you're probably not in this world. And so I think the answer is on two dimensions. I think first of all, there's an element of acting together. And what we just described on the socioeconomic analysis that we do and finding common denominators in a collective answer, I think is part of how we act towards this environment which unfortunately, I think is a more stable and insecure environment than ever. And I think that the definition of insecurity is a broader one than just a pure, I would call, military insecurity. I think insecurity today is, yes, there's a physical insecurity. I think there's a climate insecurity, and all of us feel it almost every day. There is a nutritious insecurity, unfortunately. There is an income insecurity. So the definition of insecurity is a very broad one. And it's unfortunately, I think, in the current state of geopolitics, is unfortunately going to be there for some time until some rebalancing happens. And that might take some time before that is there. Next to that, I think some of the solutions that we have in the SDGs are more relevant than ever. When we talk about energy and security, decentralized energy and renewable energy is, economically speaking, more viable than ever. And I think from a geopolitical perspective, mean, countries are fed up with being the punching ball of big geopolitics and what happens in one side of the world and they having to take the impact of that. And so, yes, there's an economic component to it. There is a climate component to it. There is also a geopolitical component to that. And I think that is the case in many domains. There's not one answer to that. And that is, I think, part of the answer that organizations such as UNDP bring is, yes, we do. global analysis and global policy work, but then we're very local organizations. I mean, 90% of our staff is in the countries, and most of these are actually local staff. And working there under the leadership of the partners with whom we work with, that I think is the way forward. So there is a lot of, you could lose yourself in doom and gloom. Some people are really good at that. That's not our job. What you expect from us is to be the organization of what works. And there is plenty of things that do work. And the ones who want to talk about what's not working, they can concentrate on that. What you can expect from us is concentrate on what does work, and then find a way to scale it up and give more people access to that.

Excellent, excellent. Inspiring words to end not only this session, but we are on the Friday of our high-level week, so I think we have to go forth with hope, with promise, with determination, with audacity. And we thank you so much for your time. We thank everyone in the room for making time. We know you have many options of where to be during your high-level week. We wish you a wonderful rest of the day and safe travels home. Thank you so much. Thank you, Alexander. Pleasure to meet you.