The new financing framework due to be agreed at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the universal post-2015 development agenda must take into account emerging global challenges and be risk-informed, said a top United Nations official.

The framework needs to be bold and transformative in supporting countries to tackle the challenges of eradicating poverty, environmental degradation, vulnerability to natural hazards, and protracted conflicts, explained United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) administrator Helen Clark.

“All sources of finance, public and private, domestic and international are needed,” Clark said, at the plenary of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development. “We must ensure that all countries, and in particular the poorest and most vulnerable, are able to access the financing opportunities which are available.”

The four-day meeting running from July 13 to 16 brings together Heads of State and Government, ministers, and representatives from civil society and business. It follows two previous financing for development conferences in Monterrey, Mexico (2002), and Doha, Qatar (2008), which promoted international co-operation on financing for development across aid, trade, debt relief, and international private finance.

In her remarks, Clark stated that Official Development Assistance (ODA) will remain essential for many countries, such as Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developed Countries, Small Island Developing States and others in special development situations, adding that one source of development finance should not substitute for another.

“The challenge is to ensure that different sources of finance complement and reinforce each other,” said Clark. “We need ODA to have more catalytic impact, including through support for building the capacity to access a wide range of financing instruments, including climate finance.”

She added that ODA can also be catalytic in strengthening domestic resource mobilization, and that capacities for inclusive growth and development need to be built within governments at all levels, and in public institutions and legal and regulatory frameworks.

Noting the reversal of development gains in some West African countries due the recent Ebola outbreak, Clark emphasised the need to invest in building human capital, as rising levels of education, skills, and health status are the backbone of development.

She also called for focus on sectors which will generate decent work and create the virtuous cycle of rising incomes which boosts demand and rates of savings to finance further investments.

“The financing needs to meet internationally-agreed development goals and national aspirations are great.  Yet our world has more wealth, more knowledge, and more technologies at its disposal than ever before,” said Clark, who also chairs the UN Development Group, that consists of the heads of all UN funds, programmes and departments working on development issues.

“Enabling all countries to access these drivers of development has to be at the heart of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, and realising the vision of the Sustainable Development Goals to protect our planet and to leave no one behind.”

She reiterated UNDP’s dedication to supporting national partners to build the capacities they need to access finance, strengthen domestic resource mobilization, and advance inclusive and sustainable development.

The Third International Conference on Financing for Development is one of four major development-related UN processes occurring this year, from that on disaster risk reduction in Sendai, Japan in March, to the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals in September in New York, USA, and the climate change conference in Paris, France where a new global climate agreement is due to be reached. – TradeArabia News Service