Mandakini D. Serie

The climate crisis loomed large over discussions at FfD4 — as Spain experienced its most intense heatwave in 64 years. “Blistering heat and empty chairs” was how Reuters described scenes at the venue, where thousands of delegates crowded into small, stuffy rooms to discuss the globe’s most pressing development financing challenges.

The FfD4 offered many reminders of how far the global development finance architecture has shifted in the last decade. One of the clearest takeaways was the quiet burial of the “billions to trillions” narrative — the once-ubiquitous slogan that aid could and would catalyse vast volumes of private investment to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).