Public Development Banks and the 2030 Agenda

Public development banks around the world can play a vital role in minimising economic decline, supporting recovery and financing structural transformation. To fulfil this role, they need to fully capture the interconnected and transversal nature of the 2030 Agenda and align their practices, operations and investments accordingly. It is not just a matter of marginally adjusting strategies and processes – public development banks need to deeply reshape behaviours and investment practices.

A study carried out by the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (Iddri), points to examples of successful approaches –from PDBs of different sizes and geographies– and, above all, shows that these financial institutions can be, under certain conditions, gateways to transformative SDG financing that promotes equitable and sustainable growth.

The bottom line is that public development banks need to work harder to achieve a complete, comprehensive and systemic integration of the SDGs, permeating all of their activities. The above, hand in hand with their ability to work side-by-side with other stakeholders and private financial actors - through strategic partnerships, blended finance or other financial mechanisms like guarantees or green / SDG bonds.

This event is co-organised in collaboration with the European Think Tanks Group (ETTG), which is a network of European independent think tanks working on EU international cooperation for global sustainable development.

The baseline for discussion will be the study published by IDDRI “Scaling up public development banks’ transformative alignment with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. As European Think Tanks we want to encourage discussions around the importance of aligning both policies and finance with the 2030 Agenda and its SDGs to chart a course towards inclusive, equitable and low carbon development.

Therefore, the central objective of this panel is to facilitate an interactive dialogue where researchers and practitioners: 1) share their experience and expert knowledge on how public development banks are transforming their practices to align with the 2030 Agenda; 2) discuss how this alignment efforts could better link short-term needs -exacerbated by the current crisis- with long-term objectives; and 3) building on the experience on climate alignment, which are the concrete challenges that PDBs face to undertake SDG alignment in practice.

Speakers

Head of Unit INTPA E3 “Sustainable Finance Policy”, DG INTPA

Elise Hadman

Research Fellow for the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda, The Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI)

Maria Alejandra Riaño

Deputy Executive Director for Strategy, Partnerships and Communication, French Development Agency (AFD)

Jeremie Daussin-Charpantier

Senior Research Fellow, Overseas Development Institute (ODI)

Samantha Attridge

Venue

InfoPoint virtual conference

Webex Meetings