The ratification of the Paris Agreement and adoption of the SDGs have brought renewed focus to international challenges such as climate change and sustainable development. This attention has, in turn, piqued financiers’ interest in being involved in international discourses and actions to achieve and finance these global goals. While globally conceived commitments have been welcomed and almost universally supported, implementation and the fulfilling of such ambitious goals will present new challenges. One key challenge is how to bridge gaps between levels of finance required to achieve the agreed goals, and the levels of finance currently invested in climate action and sustainable development. The ‘unlocking’ of private finance to fulfill sustainable development commitments offers significant potential as a prevailing solution.The recommendations of this policy brief are based on a critical literature review of current mechanisms for financing sustainable development. We examine the extent to which current investment aligns with the figures regularly purported as required to fulfill global commitments (Clark et al. 2017). Our findings show a disconnect between global ambitions and financial realities, and that mechanisms by which such commitments will be fulfilled will likely require transformations across scales of geographies, policies, and economies.
