This op-ed is by Crispian Olver and Tom Beloe and published on Eco-Business (link here).
If one call resounded throughout the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4) held from 30 June to 3 July in Sevilla, it was that countries should decide and lead their own development.
The principle of ‘country ownership’ is both essential and strategic in this decade of rising debt burdens, challenges to global cooperation and impending climate and biodiversity catastrophes. Solutions that are not country-led nor aligned with a country’s national development objectives are ultimately unsustainable.
This is not a new idea. Country ownership has been a key principle of the Financing for Development agenda since the 2002 Monterrey Consensus and central to development effectiveness in the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and follow up forum in Busan in 2011.
It should apply from ambition to financing to delivery. But with a multitude of partners, each with a different agenda and a different way of doing things, and uncertainty on financing needs and priorities at the country level, the principle has often been difficult to put into practice.
The Compromiso de Sevilla and the accompanying Sevilla Platform for Action (SPA), launched at FFD4, has embedded the principle of country ownership in the global development agenda for the next decade. This is vital in this era of heightened risk, more transactional international relations and global retrenchment, where Official Development Assistance (ODA) is being cut almost across the board.
Country ownership must underpin three key stages of a development programme.
It should start with national development ambition. Countries articulate their sustainable development and climate priorities through various plans and visions, including national development plans (NDPs), Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) and others.
These are more likely to survive the trials of time and political change if they are derived from national mandates and are embedded in and coordinated by political leadership.
Secondly, country ownership of the financing frameworks and strategies is also vital. These identify the sources of finance sought by the country and lay out the policy reforms and regulations needed to secure it. Without political leadership and a shared sense of ownership across national stakeholders, meaningful policy changes are unlikely to pass and even less likely to be enforced.
Lastly, countries must own the process of delivery and implementation of government priorities. This is where the rubber hits the road. It may be possible to make lofty announcements or design intricate policy frameworks without national ownership. But it is extremely difficult to realise them without high-level political alignment driving the process and consultations across business, civil society and affected communities.
These lessons reflect the experience of two approaches singled out by the SPA initiative, Country driven approaches to financing sustainable development and climate action: the Integrated National Financing Frameworks (INFFs) and ‘country platforms’.
To date, more than 85 countries are using the INFF approach to identify financing needs and opportunities, develop policy reform agendas, and embed sovereign financing strategies within national institutions to mobilise, align and derisk public and private investment in their NDPs, NDCs and NBSAPs. INFFs are led by ministries of finance and have to date leveraged and aligned tens of billions of dollars with national plans.
Country platforms are mechanisms to achieve deep systemic transformation towards goals identified in national strategies. They are embedded at the highest levels of government and within other national and subnational institutions, including national development banks.
They build bankable project pipelines and link them with financing partners and policy reforms under a clear and credible financing strategy, and continue to coordinate partners throughout the implementation process. All of this is done in concert with international partners but with country leadership and ownership grounded throughout the platform.
INFFs and country platforms are complementary: the INFFs shape financing frameworks while country platforms deliver investment in specific sectoral and thematic priorities. While their starting points differ, together the approaches offer a comprehensive package: country platforms will often include systemic policy reforms to ensure the financing and delivery of their objectives, and may even catalyse such reforms where INFFs are less developed.
Conversely, in countries that have grappled with an INFF already and worked out the high-level strategies needed for their national priorities, country platforms may be a simple delivery mechanism to realise investment in key priorities within them.
The emphasis on country ownership is not to suggest that there is no place for international partners in national development. On the contrary, these partners – especially the multilateral development banks (MDBs), but also government partners, the private sector, national development banks, civil society and technical advisory – all have critical roles to play at every stage, from funding and financing to technical support and coordination. The key point is that they offer their support upon request, and as requested.
Progress towards this ideal is underway in different aspects of international architecture reform – most prominently in the ‘G20 Roadmap towards better, bigger and more effective MDBs’ launched under Brazil’s G20 presidency and the supporting statements of the MDBs themselves – as well as the Global Financing Playbook launched under the Sevilla Platform for Action. But there is much still to be done.
The formalisation of South-South cooperation would help. There is sometimes an imbalance between individual countries, which may not have a clear idea of their neighbours’ experience of development practices, and the international organisations that seek to replicate their programmes in different contexts.
Governments with existing country platforms – Brazil and South Africa in particular, with their respective COP30 and G20 presidencies – are attempting to redress this balance by sharing their experience and supporting prospective countries to develop their own platforms.
Many governments have been sharing their INFF experiences regionally and globally in the same way. But more systematic exchange of knowledge and experience is needed to make sure countries can learn from each other and develop this emerging community of practice into a pillar of global cooperation.
FFD4 represents a pivotal moment to strengthen support for country leadership on financing and the principle of country ownership. It also forms a key milestone on the road to COP30 in Belém, with its strategic focus on country platforms, reinforcing the call for integrated, nationally driven solutions that bridge climate, nature and development finance. Now is the time to reinforce these principles in the development agenda. And, this time, to make it systematic.
Crispian Olver is Deputy Chairperson of the Presidential Climate Commission of Republic of South Africa. Tom Beloe is Director of UNDP Sustainable Finance Hub.
