Summary |
Achieving the Millennium Development Goals and addressing global challenges such as climate change require considerable financing. Finding the necessary resources will be challenges, especially for least developed countries. Official development assistance (ODA) is falling well short of what countries need, and commitments to provide more aid remain unfulfilled. In the midst of difficult financial times, many donor countries have cut back on development assistance. In 2011, aid flows declined in real terms for the first time in many years.
The need for additional and more predictable development financing has led to a search for alternative, innovative sources. A number of initiatives have been launched during the past decade, most of which have been used to fund global health programmes that have helped to provide immunizations and AIDS and tuberculosis treatments to millions of people in the developing world.
While these initiatives have successfully used novel methods to channel development financing, they have not yielded much additional funding, thus leaving available finance well short of what is needed. This is one reason why proposals to mobilize resources for development through sources beyond ODA, including innovative finance mechanisms, have generated renewed interest from both Governments and civil society.
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