Happy New Year and welcome back to the first 2026 edition of Invested. This week, we’re spanning the 2025–2026 divide by looking back on last year and looking forward at what’s next.
Following a year where the U.S. retreated from the front lines of climate diplomacy and European powers pivoted toward defense spending, the global development community finds itself navigating a landscape of strategic silence and fragmented leadership on climate change.
For investors and development finance institutions, this year’s focus isn't likely to be the “what” — the goal to reach $300 billion in annual public climate finance by 2035 — but the “how,” experts tell me. The future is uncertain: There are no clear guidelines on getting there, the road map for boosting that $300 billion to at least $1.3 trillion in annual climate finance by the same year is largely stalled, and no major economies are yet willing to commit to five-year pledges beyond 2025. Meanwhile, private players are entering a period of “green-hushing” in which they continue their climate-smart transitions in the shadows to avoid political crosshairs, making impact-tracking a daunting new challenge for transparency.
Experts say that the real movement this year likely won't happen in big plenary halls, but in the budget committees of domestic parliaments and the quiet strategies of private insurers who recognize that, regardless of the political winds, climate risk remains a permanent fixture on the balance sheet.
Key themes to watch in 2026:
• The transparency gap: The rise of green-hushing among private investors creates a data vacuum that could stall the mobilization of private capital.
• Adaptation accountability: Under new Ghanaian leadership, the African group of negotiators on climate change is pushing to turn 59 technical indicators into grant-based finance mechanisms.
• The finance plumbing: A recognition that the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP, sets the goals, but the G7, G20, and finance ministries control the actual delivery of the $300 billion goal.
Read: What you need to understand about climate and development in 2026 (Pro)
+ Join us for an expert-led Devex Pro event on Jan. 15 to explore the development finance trends to watch out for this year. Speakers include UNDP’s Marcos Neto, ODI Global’s Frederique Dahan, and GSG Impact’s Elizabeth Boggs Davidsen. Save your spot now.
Survival of the fittest
In 2025, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency emerged as a rare success story in an otherwise turbulent year for Washington’s development landscape. While larger peers such as USAID faced existential threats and an “America First” restructuring, the tiny, nearly 60-person USTDA managed to navigate the first year of the second Trump administration by leaning into its identity as a transactional powerhouse, my colleague Adva Saldinger writes. By demonstrating an average of $226 in U.S. exports for every dollar spent and aligning its work with U.S. national security priorities — think critical minerals, digital infrastructure, and competing with China — USTDA proved it could serve this administration’s foreign policy vision without losing its core mission.
However, survival has required a significant pivot, Adva writes. The agency underwent a recalibration that saw the termination of most climate-related activities and a decline in global health funding in favor of gas infrastructure, nuclear energy, and supply chain security. Geographically, a renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere signals a move to reclaim influence in regions where the U.S. has historically been less active. As the U.S. Congress weighs expanding the agency’s authority to work in high-income countries, USTDA is positioning itself not as a traditional aid provider, but as a strategic vanguard for U.S. private sector engagement in a more competitive global market.
Key themes to watch in 2026:
• The national security filter: Every new project must now clear an explicit national security assessment. This isn’t just about feasibility; it’s about how a project helps the U.S. outcompete China, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region and sub-Saharan Africa.
• Critical minerals: A major priority for 2026 is securing supply chains for copper, cobalt, and nickel.
• Energy dominance 2.0: Following the termination of most climate-only grants in 2025, the 2026 portfolio is leaning heavily into gas infrastructure and small modular reactors, or SMRs, for nuclear energy. The goal is baseload power that facilitates U.S. technology exports.
• Digital infrastructure: Expect continued funding for connectivity.
Read: How the small US Trade and Development Agency navigated 2025
Queen of the south
In 2025, MacKenzie Scott rewrote the rules of her own philanthropy, deploying a staggering $7.2 billion — nearly four times her 2024 total. While Scott described this sum as a “vanishingly tiny fraction” of the global economy, her annual spending has now reached parity with that of the Gates Foundation. This was accompanied by a pivotal strategic shift: A twelvefold increase in support for organizations working in low- and middle-income countries. By moving $1.2 billion into the global south, Scott has transitioned from a primarily U.S.-focused donor to a dominant force in international development, specifically targeting the intersection of climate resilience and grassroots empowerment.
The 2025 data — as analyzed by my colleague Miguel Antonio Tamonan — reveals a sophisticated funding strategy, where Scott is increasingly using regrantors and large intermediaries to push capital further into local ecosystems. While she remains loyal to her no-strings-attached philosophy, a clearer sectoral hierarchy has emerged. Higher education and scholarship funds remain her primary focus in the U.S., but her international portfolio is now undeniably defined by climate and conservation — from funding massive maritime decarbonization efforts to supporting indigenous-led biodiversity trusts in Micronesia and Brazil.
Key themes to watch in 2026:
• The twelvefold surge in global south funding: Scott’s allocation to organizations working in low- and middle-income countries jumped from $94 million in 2024 to $1.2 billion in 2025, potentially signaling a shift in her portfolio toward global development and climate mitigation.
• Climate is the new North Star: Fifty-one grantees in the 2025 cohort specifically list climate and conservation as core focus areas.
• Direct local investment: While many global grants still go to U.S.-headquartered NGOs, Scott moved significant capital directly to global south-based entities.
Read: How MacKenzie Scott quadrupled her philanthropic giving in 2025 (Pro)
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Girl power
Your next job?
Senior HR Officer, Performance and Reward
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
Beijing, China
Investing in women is not a matter of ideology but of fundamental economic survival, Seema Jalan, a deputy director at the Gates Foundation, writes in an opinion piece for Devex. Jalan warns that in the current climate of politically polarized and economically strained global markets, governments are often tempted to view funding for women’s health and economic opportunity as optional. She pushes back against this narrative, asserting that cuts to these sectors are not savings but rather costs deferred that will eventually be paid back with steeper penalties by national economies.
Jalan frames the path forward through a strategic framework she calls the “three Cs,” which she identifies as the “scaffolding of shared economic prosperity”: contraceptives, care, and capital. By focusing on these three specific pillars, Jalan argues that global leaders can transition from symbolic rhetoric to sustained, strategic financing required to stabilize communities and improve the effectiveness of public institutions.
“Progress is not inevitable; it is a choice. And the choice before us is clear: continue letting outdated systems waste talent and weaken economies or invest deliberately in the people and services that make societies healthier, more prosperous, and more stable,” Jalan writes.
Opinion: It’s not too late to reverse course on financing women and girls
What we’re reading
The nautical theory of African development. [The Economist]
The winners and losers of Trump’s new foreign policy. [Foreign Policy]
Green horizons: Mobilizing climate capital to support safe routes for green-skilled displaced people. [Center for Global Development]
About the author
Jesse Chase-Lubitz
Jesse Chase-Lubitz covers climate change and multilateral development banks for Devex. She previously worked at Nature Magazine, where she received a Pulitzer grant for an investigation into land reclamation. She has written for outlets such as Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and The Japan Times, among others. Jesse holds a master’s degree in Environmental Policy and Regulation from the London School of Economics.
