Davos is over. Adva Saldinger logged 7 miles on foot each day (she tracked it) among interviews, panels, and events. Here’s what she learned:
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“Pragmatic” sustainability: The International Sustainability Standards Board was founded last year to create global standards on sustainability disclosures. What could that mean for small businesses and low-income countries?
“It’s absolutely clear we need proportionality, education, capacity building, and time,” ISSB Chair Emmanuel Faber responded to Adva during a press conference. ISSB is looking at developing apps or digital solutions for smaller companies that can reduce the reporting burden: e.g., making it easier to measure their individual emissions.
“That’s the level of pragmatism I think we should design,” Faber said.
Same old, same old: Adva spoke to the CEO of a growing private health care business in South Asia, with about $8 million in revenues last year. The CEO has been turned down by DFIs, which say the firm is too small to invest in. Meanwhile, a multilateral development bank official admitted their institution is still “very very risk averse.” New incentive structures or board directives could help — but we’ve heard that before.
Net zero and nature positive? Climate folks talk about the goal of getting to “net zero” carbon emissions. But Marco Lambertini, the director general of WWF International, told Adva that there’s still no global goal against which progress and accountability can be tracked on biodiversity.
Lambertini wants measurable targets on what it means to be “nature positive” to be the goal at the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity later this year.
ICYMI: Tune into our Davos Dispatch podcast with our main takeaways from the event, an explainer on digital currencies, and interviews with the likes of Global Fund Executive Director Peter Sands and Wellcome Director Jeremy Farrar.
Join us
USAID is procuring its largest-ever suite of contracts — nine global health supply chain contracts worth up to $17 billion. But USAID and other donors are also thinking hard about how to fund locally led organizations and involve communities in setting development priorities.
Join Devex and a panel of experts on June 9 to understand which essential changes are needed, including best practices in development supply chains, how to create more opportunities for small businesses, and how to improve subcontracting relationships. This event is exclusively for Devex Pro subscribers. If you’re not a subscriber yet, you can sign up for a free trial to join.
Adding it up
The European Court of Auditors has found serious shortcomings in the way the European Commission — the EU executive — counts its spending on climate action.
The @EU_Commission had announced that the 🇪🇺 had spent €216 billion on climate action.
— European Court of Auditors (@EUauditors) May 30, 2022
However, we found that the reported spending was not always relevant to climate action, and that the amount reported for that purpose had been overstated by at least €72 billion. pic.twitter.com/qL7IfdRzpm
Via Twitter.
Keeping track
Want to know which businesses are contributing to the humanitarian response in Ukraine and how much they’re giving? The U.N.’s Connecting Business Initiative launched a new tool to track just that. It has data on more than $1.4 billion in contributions from more than 350 businesses.
+ Catch up on all our coverage of the humanitarian response to the war in Ukraine.
The debt don’t die
Debt relief campaigners introduced a bill in New York State earlier this month that would force private creditors to engage in debt relief initiatives, just like the U.S. government and other creditors do.
“As most countries face terrible economic and debt crises due to the pandemic and the Ukraine war, decisions made in New York will impact how developing countries can resolve their debt crises,” said Eric LeCompte of the Jubilee USA Network, a key figure in lobbying for the legislation. The move would also help limit supply shocks for the U.S., he added.
ICYMI: Indebted to faith — how the Jubilee campaign aims to end global poverty
+ Sign up to Faith and Development, our free monthly newsletter that focuses on the role faith groups and their communities play in strengthening global development outcomes.
Announcements of interest
• BlackRock and UN Women signed a memorandum of understanding to promote gender lens investing. According to the press release: “BlackRock will develop strategies to mobilize capital in support of economic opportunity for women. UN Women will serve as a knowledge partner and collaborate on data and research.”
• First Movers Coalition members Alphabet, Microsoft, and Salesforce collectively committed $500 million to carbon dioxide removal.
What we’re reading
Turning health clinics into appealing customers to the energy sector. [Devex Pro]
Nonprofit carbon credit registry Verra is cracking down on cryptocurrency. [WSJ]
Construction is set to begin on Vietnam’s first green hydrogen plant. [Reuters]
Shabtai Gold contributed to this edition of Devex Invested.
About the authors
Vince Chadwickvchadw
Vince Chadwick is a contributing reporter at Devex. A law graduate from Melbourne, Australia, he was social affairs reporter for The Age newspaper, before covering breaking news, the arts, and public policy across Europe, including as a reporter and editor at POLITICO Europe. He was long-listed for International Journalist of the Year at the 2023 One World Media Awards.
Adva Saldinger@AdvaSal
Adva Saldinger is a Senior Reporter at Devex where she covers development finance, as well as U.S. foreign aid policy. Adva explores the role the private sector and private capital play in development and authors the weekly Devex Invested newsletter bringing the latest news on the role of business and finance in addressing global challenges. A journalist with more than 10 years of experience, she has worked at several newspapers in the U.S. and lived in both Ghana and South Africa.
