International Finance for Climate Change Adaptation in Response to the Needs of Developing Countries
December 10, 2025
FERDI launched a three-part webinar series entitled "Reconciling International Development Finance with the Financing of Global Public Goods."
The series includes:
The third and final webinar explored the limitations of existing financing metrics, current methodological developments, and their implications for the governance of international development finance and the financing of global public goods.
Moderator: Bruno Cabrillac, Director General of Ferdi
Panellists:
Concessional financing now plays a central role in addressing major international challenges. Historically designed to support the economic and social development of low-income countries, it is now also being mobilised to finance global public goods such as the fight against climate change, the preservation of biodiversity and the prevention of pandemics.
This development raises a fundamental question: do current systems for measuring and monitoring financial flows allow us to properly distinguish between funding intended for development and that allocated to global public goods?
Whilst this is certainly a technical question, it also determines our ability to assess donors’ actual efforts, to evaluate the additionality of funding allocated to global public goods, to measure the trade-offs made in the allocation of concessional resources and, more broadly, to strengthen the transparency and accountability of the international financial architecture.
Climate change is a particularly telling example in this regard. The two main dimensions of climate action – mitigation and adaptation – pursue complementary but distinct objectives.
Mitigation aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and primarily yields global benefits. Because it contributes to a global public good, its funding naturally tends to be directed towards projects that achieve the greatest emission reductions at the lowest cost, regardless of the countries in which they are implemented.
Adaptation, on the other hand, addresses primarily local needs. It aims to strengthen the resilience of populations, infrastructure and economies in the face of the consequences of climate change. As such, it shares many characteristics with development finance and primarily concerns the poorest and most vulnerable countries.
These differences in purpose raise a broader question: should funding for development and funding for global public goods be identified, tracked and analysed using separate metrics?
Whilst it is tempting to answer in the affirmative, current systems for tracking financial flows often struggle to clearly distinguish between the objectives pursued by different forms of funding. Definitions sometimes remain inconsistent, accounting methods vary between institutions, and existing statistical categories do not always allow for an accurate assessment of the actual purpose of the projects being funded.
This situation makes it more difficult to assess the efforts devoted to development and global public goods respectively. It also limits policymakers’ ability to assess the consistency of allocations, to compare the practices of different donors, and to verify the extent to which concessional resources actually support the objectives assigned to them.
At the same time, recent advances in data analytics and artificial intelligence are opening up new avenues for analysing international financial flows. New approaches now make it possible to examine the content of funded projects in greater detail and to improve their classification according to their actual objectives. These innovations could help to modernise the monitoring tools available and enrich the debate on the governance of international financing.
Beyond the methodological issue, the stakes are deeply strategic. Better distinguishing between funding intended for development and that dedicated to global public goods is essential for informing debates on the allocation of concessional resources (see the Ferdi webinar on 13 May on allocation), strengthening trust between partners and ensuring that the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable countries remain visible amidst a proliferation of international priorities.
As the United Nations High-Level Political Forum, which aims to reinvigorate the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development, is set to take place, this webinar brought together researchers, representatives of international institutions and development finance practitioners to examine the limitations of current metrics, ongoing methodological innovations and their implications for the governance of international development finance and global public goods.
