Friday 27 October 2023 | 9:30 – 12:20 (CET) | IFAD HQ, Rome, Italy and Zoom
High-Level Session on Sustainable Finance: Making Donor Funding More Catalytic
Keynote Speaker
Paul Clements-Hunt
Founder of the Blended Capital Group, former Head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Finance Initiative (FI)
High-Level Reaction
Andrea Zinn
Director, Council on Smallholder Agricultural Finance (CSAF) and Senior Manager Aceli Americas, Aceli Africa
Panelists
Program Manager and Regional Thematic Advisor, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)
Managing Partner, Contrast Capital
Investment Officer, Manufacturing, Agribusiness and Services, Proparco
Senior Advisor, Food Systems for the Future
Head of Blended Finance, Rabo Partnerships
Economist, Innovative Finance & Capital Markets, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA)
Head of Agriculture, Food Security and Land, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)
Agricultural Finance Lead, USAID Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security
Co-founder and Director of Programmes, Shamba Centre for Food & Climate
Moderator
Carin Smaller
Co-Founder and Executive Director, Shamba Centre for Food & Climate, Co-Founder of Hesat2030
Session 3 – High-Level Session on Sustainable Finance: Making Donor Funding More Catalytic
Background
The estimated additional public investment needed from donors and recipient countries to achieve SDG2 by 2030 ranges between US$33 and 50 billion per year. The research community agrees(1) that the donor share of this total is about additional US$14 billion per year, or roughly double the current level of spending on agriculture and food security, excluding emergency food assistance.
Despite significant efforts by donors and development banks to fill the investment gap, there is now consensus that development finance alone is insufficient. The investment gap will not be filled by the public sector exclusively. More is needed to make other sources of finance work, including commercial loans from multilateral development banks, and blended finance from both public and private sectors.
Donors are well aware of this challenge and are seeking financial additionality through blending their finance with commercial lenders. Defined by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as “the strategic use of development finance for the mobilization of additional finance towards sustainable development in developing countries”, blended finance offers an untapped opportunity to fill the investment gap.
| Agenda | |
|---|---|
| 9:30 – 9:45 | Welcome and opening
Moderator: Carin Smaller, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Shamba Centre for Food & Climate, Co-Founder of Hesat2030 |
| 9:45 – 10:00 | Keynote Address
Paul Clements-Hunt, Founder of the Blended Capital Group, former Head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Finance Initiative (FI) |
| 10:00 – 10:15 | Setting the scene: An overview of the findings from the GDPRD enquiry Oshani Perera, Co-founder and Director of Programmes, Shamba Centre for Food & Climate Carin Smaller |
| 10:15 – 10:35 | High-Level reaction to the findings
Paul Clements-Hunt |
| 10:35 – 10:50 | Coffee break |
| 10:50 – 12:20 | Recommendations for the way forward and Panel Discussion
Peter Beez, Program Manager and Regional Thematic Advisor, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) |
| 12:20 | End of session |
Topics and objectives
The Shamba Centre for Food & Climate conducted an enquiry on sustainable finance in agri-food systems for the members of the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development (GDPRD) to explore how donors and development banks are working to make aid more catalytic. Interviews took place under Chatham House rules with over 50 donors, philanthropic foundations, development banks, public and blended funds, fund managers, investment advisors, international organisations, NGOs, investor networks, sustainable finance networks, academic and experts on sustainable finance.
This session will present the results of the enquiry and will address the following topics:
Expected outcomes
At the end of the session, participants are expected to:
(1) Laborde, D., Murphy, S., Parent, M., Porciello, J. and Smaller, C. 2020. Ceres2030: Sustainable Solutions to End Hunger – Summary Report. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), and Cornell University. Available from: https://ceres2030.iisd.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/ceres2030_en-summary-report.pdf.
