30 November 2014: The UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) has issued a preliminary, unedited draft version of a report on sustainable development financing, seeking to outline a “practical action agenda” for the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD). The draft report, ‘Financing Sustainable Development: Implementing the SDGs through Effective Investment Strategies and Partnerships,’ authored by Jeffrey Sachs and Guido Schmidt-Traub, is available for public consultation until 15 January 2015.

SDSN notes that the report builds on and complements reports from the Intergovernmental Committee of Experts on Sustainable Development Financing (ICESDF), the World Bank and others. It examines questions on designing new institutions to handle long-term and complex investments for health, education, sustainable agriculture, sustainable infrastructure, and other key sustainable development priorities. It also: includes an assessment of public and private financing needs across key Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) investment areas; provides an analysis of how successful investments from public-private partnerships have worked in health and draws lessons for application to other areas; and proposes a set of ten recommendations for consideration by UN Member States in the lead-up to the FfD Conference.

As part of these recommendations, the report calls for, inter alia: adopting clear standards for domestic resource mobilization that respond to countries’ needs and ability to raise resources; reforming international regulation and ensuring transparency to support domestic resource mobilization; ensuring that capital markets can provide long-term finance for infrastructure and other sustainable development finance needs; adopting clear standards and targets for additional Official Development Assistance (ODA) and transparent monitoring; agreeing to transparent eligibility criteria for ODA and other public international flows; adopting the principle of assessed contributions for climate finance and specifying an assessment formula; and launching public-private partnerships for key sustainable development technologies to prepare technology road maps and promote technology development.

According to SDSN, the Government of Ethiopia has asked SDSN to serve as an official advisor to the process leading to the FfD Conference, which will convene in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 13-16 July 2015. In this context SDSN is leading a Global Finance for Sustainable Development Group, has established four working groups to provide specific recommendations, and is hosting a series of workshops around the world, in addition to holding a public consultation on the draft report. [SDSN Webpage on Financing for Sustainable Development] [Publication: Financing Sustainable Development: Implementing the SDGs through Effective Investment Strategies and Partnerships] [Public Consultation Form]