Washington — Donors on track to fall short on support for major international funds, new analysis suggests
Donor commitments to some of the world’s largest development, health, and climate funds are at risk of falling short, experts at the Center for Global Development warned today, drawing on a newly released report analyzing upcoming pledges and past contributions to 13 major international funds.
Over the next six months, four funds, including some of the world’s largest like the World Bank’s International Development Association and Gavi, are seeking to raise almost $50 billion in what the experts called a “traffic jam” of replenishments. But fundraising prospects look increasingly grim, they say, with competing demands for shrinking resources as donors increasingly have different priorities for their aid spending.
“All the warning signs are flashing red, and we’re already seeing strong signs that current fundraising could fall short. Some funds are already talking about financial engineering to stretch their budgets,” said Janeen Madan Keller, one of the authors of the report and a policy fellow at the Center for Global Development.
Part of the problem is a growing fragmentation of the international system due to the proliferation of new and often duplicative funds focused on specific issues from climate to pandemic preparedness, according to the report.
“Donors tend to launch new funds as a political signal they care about an issue, but there’s often little financial follow-through. So, we see an ever-growing number of institutions competing for the same pot of money from the same dozen countries,” said Clemence Landers, an author of the report and a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development.
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The report identified several trends in the funding of the international system:
· A few large donors dominate: Across all 13 funds studied, the same 10 countries were responsible for between 60% and 97% of funding.
· Traditional donors are still in the lead: Across the 13 funds, the top 5 overall donors were the US, UK, Japan, Germany, and France. China ranked 11th.
· Donors have sharply differing priorities: The US is the world’s largest donor to health funds, while more than 95% of China’s commitments go to the World Bank’s concessional arm and other development banks which focus on broader development programs. Germany is the only major donor where climate funds take the top spot.
· Thematic focuses have shifted: Twenty years ago, more than 75% of donor pledges examined in the report went to the World Bank and other development banks with broad anti-poverty goals. Today, the majority go to health- and climate-specific funds.
“Donors need to step up or we risk losing years of hard-won health and development gains. But we also need a new way of thinking about the current international funding system,” said Madan Keller.
