30 March 2017
Monthly Forecast: April 2017
story highlights

The Spring meetings of the World Bank and the IMF will include the gathering of the joint Development Committee and the IMF's International Monetary and Financial Committee.

In the first week of April, two meetings on mobilizing domestic resources through taxation will focus on how institutions and governments can better coordinate to make the most of this key MOI.

The 3rd SE4All Forum will serve as a marketplace to help broker new partnerships and ideas, spur investment and drive action towards realizing SDG 7.

“Show Me the Money!” could be the tagline for April with sustainable development finance set to receive a great deal of scrutiny, including the annual Spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Other events will consider taxation and resource mobilization for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and climate finance. The global community will also focus on renewable energy this month via the 3rd Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) Forum.

The World Bank and the IMF will hold their Spring meetings from 21-23 April, in Washington, DC, US. These will include the gathering of the joint Development Committee and the IMF’s International Monetary and Financial Committee. The meetings, which draw some 10,000 participants annually, provide a forum for discussing progress on the work of the Bank and Fund alongside issues of international concern, such as the world economic outlook, aid effectiveness and how to realize the development goals of constituents and stakeholders. Among many briefings, the ‘World Economic Outlook’ and the ‘Global Financial Stability Report’ (GFSR) will be addressed. The changing political landscape in the US and Britain, as well as implications for development finance, the hunger crisis that is gripping Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, the ongoing refugee/migration crisis, and how to spur African development, will also feature in discussions and seminars.

On the sidelines of these Spring meetings, the Global Infrastructure Forum, an annual meeting mandated by the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA), will take place. This Forum aims to close the global gap in infrastructure investment, as well as capacity gaps, to ensure alignment with the SDGs. It also seeks to improve alignment and coordination among established and new infrastructure initiatives by multilateral and national development banks, UN agencies, national institutions, development partners and the private sector. The outcomes of the Forum will be reported to the May 2017 meeting of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Forum on Financing for Development Follow-up (FFD Forum).

At its annual Partnership Forum, ECOSOC will consider principles and guidelines governing partnerships – the subject of many questions since the 2030 Agenda was adopted.

The action on finance, taxation and means of implementation (MOI), which relate to SDG 17, will continue beyond the spring meetings. In the first week of April, two meetings on mobilizing domestic resources through taxation will take place in New York, US, with an expected focus on how institutions and governments can better coordinate to make the most of this key MOI. At the same time, the ECOSOC will hold its annual Partnership Forum, which will look at principles and guidelines governing partnerships – the subject of many questions over the past 18 months, since the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted. On 5 April, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) will hold its 2017 Global Forum on Development in Paris, France, to address the gap between actual and desired levels of investments to achieve the SDGs, with a focus on private sector engagement and partnerships. And the UN General Assembly (UNGA) President will organize an SDG Action event focused on SDG financing.

Two other finance-related meetings in April will focus on climate finance, relating to SDG 13 (climate action) in particular. The 16th Meeting of the Board of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) will address guidance received from the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the Fund’s second year of full operations. Also on climate finance, but focusing on adaptation, April will see the launch of the concept of an Adaptation Benefit Mechanism (ABM), which could serve as a business model to encourage private sector investment in climate change adaptation.

Adaptation practitioners will also gather at the NAP Expo, which aims to catalyze actions and support for the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) process. The Expo is conducted by the least developed countries expert group (or LEG) and supported by the UNFCCC Secretariat in collaboration with relevant organizations.

On the mitigation front, clean energy will take center stage in April. The 3rd SE4All Forum will be organized around the theme of ‘Going Further, Faster – Together.’ The Forum will serve as a marketplace to help broker new partnerships and ideas, spur investment and drive action towards realizing SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy). Mitigating energy-related emissions will be key to the reductions of emissions from the civil aviation industry. This will be the focus of a series of Regional Seminars on States’ Action Plans and Carbon offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA), organized by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), also in April.

Alice Bisiaux, Faye Leone, Lauren Anderson and Lynn Wagner


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