Can financing for development talks succeed?

It is easy to be pessimistic about multilateralism nowadays. Recent international gatherings have yielded only unfulfilled promises. At a time when US President Donald Trump is abandoning America's international commitments, rejecting multilateral initiatives, and sowing chaos and confusion in global trade, can the Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) at the end of this month go any better?

- Jayati Ghosh

To be sure, the United States may well act as a spoiler in Seville. But that does not mean that the summit will be a bust. After all, America's withdrawal from the 2015 Paris climate agreement during Mr Trump's first presidency did not lead to its demise. While action has been limited, almost everyone recognises that without the agreement, climate change would likely occur even faster.

It is clearly possible for the world to make progress on shared challenges without the US. The lack of US involvement in the FfD4 might even prove advantageous, given its record of extracting compromises that favour its own multinational companies, and then refusing to sign or enforce deals anyway. The negotiations for the OECD Global Tax Deal, finalised in 2021, are a case in point. But success will require other countries to fill the global leadership gap and demonstrate a credible commitment to the multilateral cooperation that is essential to our survival. Fortunately, the first draft of the FfD4’s outcome document recognises this imperative and advances many useful and practical policy proposals, including several from the final report of the International Commission of Experts on Financing for Development.

A key focus of the document is enabling greater domestic resource mobilisation.