World
Dispatches from Seville
The fourth edition of the UN Financing for Development (FfD4) conference concluded in Seville earlier this month. Once the Trump Administration withdrew from the event, UN member states agreed on the outcome document, the Compromiso de Sevilla, an unprecedented two weeks ahead of the final meeting. Though many member states had pushed for commitments to ambitious, structural reforms, the final revised text saw most of these either removed or diluted. This was usually due to the policy priorities of global North governments.
This series follows the discussions and development commitments of the FfD4. The authors, Daniela Gabor, Iolanda Fresnillo and María José Romero, followed the process closely—the first as a member of the UN’s International Commission of Experts, the latter two as civil society activists. Together they address the fundamental limits of the presiding “investible development” model, while asking what the Seville conference can tell us about the future of development.
After Seville
COP30 in Belém
The fourth UN Financing for Development conference, which concluded in Seville earlier this month, was a high-stakes event. The climate crisis is accelerating while climate commitments are weakening; official development assistance is shrinking while debt service is eviscerating poor countries’…
The Private Sector at Seville
Investment alliances at FfD4
Ten years after the 2015 Addis Ababa Conference on Financing for Development, the finance development doctrine of “Billions to Trillions,” popularized by the World Bank, is alive and kicking. At the Fourth Conference on Financing for Development, taking place in…
The Welfare State and Its Discontents
The Seville model of investible development
Ajay Banga, the World Bank Group’s president, has a favorite line: “Poverty is a state of mind.” It was in his speech at the IMF/World Bank Annual meeting last October, and he repeated it at the opening ceremony of the…
Who’s Afraid of a Fair Debt Architecture?
Sovereign debt at FfD4 in Seville
The fourth Financing for Development Conference officially kicked off in Seville this Monday, as world leaders gathered with broad smiles to congratulate one another for the good work already achieved. That work was the FfD4 outcome document, which had been…
Dispatch from Seville
Fracturing multilateralism at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development
Multilateralism might be broken, but it is not dead yet. Or so we should conclude from the multilateral negotiations ahead of the fourth edition of the UN Financing for Development conference, about to begin in Seville. A once in a…