Presented by The Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs
With COP30 days away, Belém is still a construction zone as world leaders prepare to arrive. What began as a small U.N. climate gathering is now a global diplomatic stage and Brazil hopes to seize the moment with its Tropical Forest Forever Facility.
Also in today’s edition: New research suggests the European Investment Bank has around €200 billion in unused lending capacity, and the latest from the International Conference on Family Planning.
+ Join us on Monday for a Devex Pro Funding Briefing with Shockwave Foundation CEO Jennifer Wegbreit to explore how the U.S.-based funder is advancing food and water security in climate-vulnerable regions — and what its catalytic approach can teach NGOs, social enterprises, and other funders looking to drive long-term impact. Register now.
This event is exclusive to Devex Pro members. Not yet gone Pro? Start your 15-day free trial now to access the event and all our live briefings and analyses with sector leaders and insiders.
The calm before COP
After a string of travel mishaps — including a nine-hour delay, reboarding the same plane hours later, and then a broken bridge to the airport — my colleague Jesse Chase-Lubitz finally landed in Belém, Brazil, at 4:30 a.m. local time. Jesse is at the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, a few days early for the leaders’ summit, and she says it really feels like she got to the party too early: the venue’s still under construction, food and coffee stalls aren’t open, and there are more people in hard hats than in blazers and badges.
But it’s a party that’s come a long way. Thirty years ago, around 2,000 people showed up for the first U.N. climate conference; in 2023, nearly 100,000 registered for COP28. What began as a niche gathering of diplomats and NGOs is now a full-blown geopolitical showpiece — one that can reshape host countries’ global standing, attract investment, and even spark domestic policy shifts. Hosting COP has become as much about diplomacy and development as it is about climate — from the U.K. using COP26 to project post-Brexit leadership to oil-rich states such as the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan using it to prove their international clout.
This year, it’s Brazil’s turn to harness that spotlight. Over the next few days, the world’s climate leaders — including World Bank chief Ajay Banga, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and, of course, Prince William — will descend on Belém to talk forests, finance, and the future.
Setting the tone for the week, yesterday, Brazil launched its flagship Tropical Forest Forever Facility, or TFFF, drawing pledges of support from several countries. Norway made the biggest splash, committing 30 billion krone ($3 billion) in loans over the next decade. Smaller pledges came from Colombia ($250 million), the Netherlands ($5 million for TFFF’s secretariat), and Portugal ($1 million). But notably, the United Kingdom — an early backer of the idea — said it would not contribute taxpayer funds to the initiative.
Keep an eye out for updates from roundtables on climate and nature, energy transition, and nationally determined contributions. Plus, stay tuned for our lineup of special COP30 Newswire editions — the first one will be hitting your inboxes on Monday. You can also reach out to our climate reporters who will be on the ground: Jesse via jesse.chaselubitz@devex.com, and Ayenat Mersie via ayenat.mersie@devex.com.
Read: The power and pageantry of the COP presidency
ICYMI: Food and climate at COP30 — 5 things to watch in Belém
Billions left on the table
Is Europe’s biggest development bank sitting comfortably on roughly €200 billion ($232 billion) in unused lending capacity?
That’s the determination by Stephen Paduano, a postdoctoral research fellow at Oxford University and former U.S. Treasury official. He argues that the European Investment Bank — which is fully owned by the European Union’s member states — could dramatically scale up its operations both within and beyond Europe without losing its AAA credit rating.
So why hasn’t it done so? According to Paduano, it remains constrained by internal conservatism and rigid guarantee policies, Jesse writes. The analysis comes amid global efforts to push MDBs to stretch their balance sheets. Beyond EIB, the research shows that many other MDBs hold vast reserves that they could safely deploy.
Chris Humphrey of ODI Global, who helped draft the G20’s Capital Adequacy Framework progress reports, says EIB’s conservative approach is emblematic of a wider challenge among MDBs. A G20 report covered by Devex in 2022 showed that development banks could move hundreds of billions of dollars in additional lending to lower-income countries if they took on more risk. The report argued that a series of reforms could push new lending out the door in as little as a year.
Humphrey says the question of how much MDBs can safely do while maintaining their AAA status has become central to ongoing reform efforts.
“It does seem like the EIB has an awful lot of room underneath the AAA rating,” he says. “Why they’re not using it? I don’t know. But it’s clear they could be doing more.”
Read: Europe’s biggest development bank is sitting on €200 billion
ICYMI: A deep dive into the world’s biggest MDBs
+Listen: For a special episode of our podcast series, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar and Radio Davos host Robin Pomeroy sat down with experts — on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s Humanitarian and Resilience Investing Initiative Frontier Markets Impact Meeting in Geneva — to discuss the seismic financial shock wave that has hit the aid sector and explore the models needed to unlock private capital and sustain development progress.
Snip, snip — done deal
Looking for a mic-drop conversation starter at a global health conference? My colleague Jenny Lei Ravelo found one. Tucked in a corner on the ground floor of Ágora Bogotá Convention Centre, where the seventh International Conference on Family Planning is taking place, was a booth containing a wall of sperm that just got “retired” following a vasectomy — a family planning method available for men but that doesn’t get as many eyeballs.
Dr. John Curington of the nonprofit No-Scalpel Vasectomy International tells Jenny vasectomy uptake remains low among couples who choose a contraception method, and the burden often falls on the woman to take a contraceptive. However, that can change with government and public health organization programs.
He gave the example of Zambia, where a decade ago, only seven vasectomies took place annually. Today, that number has skyrocketed to several hundred a year.
“The decision shouldn’t be just something happening to a woman's body,” Curington says. “Couples in which both partners share in the joy of sex, both partners should share in the responsibility of sex. So offering vasectomies is the way so that a guy who has shared in the joy of sex, the pleasure of sex, for years, can now step up and take his own responsibility.”
The cost of vasectomies varies per country and within countries. In the U.S., “a country of great health disparities,” he says the procedure can cost as much as $2,500, or as little as zero.
But at a time when donor funding for family planning programs is shrinking, vasectomies are very cost-effective as they are only done once, and, Curington assures, it’s a gentle and quick procedure.
Hello, USAID, my old friend
Jenny tells me USAID took center stage during a session at the conference on Wednesday — not for new announcements, but for a wave of nostalgia. Former staffers and partners who’d worked on USAID projects swapped stories about the agency’s outsized role in shaping global health and family planning.
They remembered how USAID helped countries build supply chain systems and laid the groundwork for today’s best practices — from generating evidence for midwives to provide post-abortion care, to integrating family planning into postpartum services. Several speakers noted that USAID had a hand in developing or introducing almost every contraceptive method on the market today.
But the mood turned more somber as they reflected on what’s been lost since the agency’s dismantling. One speaker recalled having to lay off more than 150 people when funding vanished. And in Zambia, a youth organization that had been preparing to lead a major USAID project saw everything collapse overnight when the Trump administration abruptly terminated thousands of grants and awards.
“For us, it felt like you have been dating this person, you are courting this person, and you're about to get married, and he dies, literally,” said Natasha Salifyanji Kaoma, CEO of Copper Rose Zambia.
Related: Family planning faces 'funding emergency' as top donors cut aid budgets
+ For more insider reporting on global health, sign up for Devex CheckUp, a free, weekly newsletter.
America’s quiet surrender
A rare bipartisan success story is quietly unraveling. The Women, Peace, and Security, or WPS, Act of 2017 made the U.S. the first country to legally link gender equality to national security — but “that bipartisan agenda is going dark overnight,” write Tazreen Hussain, Carolyn Washington, and Rachel Wein in their opinion piece for Devex.
The administration missed the Oct. 31 deadline for its legally required report to Congress, dismantling what they call “one of America’s most effective, values-driven tools of national security.” With the act’s interagency structure gutted and public data erased, “this isn’t a bureaucratic hiccup. It’s a political unraveling.”
A shadow report to Congress now replaces official oversight — a tool once used by women in fragile democracies. “It’s a stunning reversal,” the authors warn. When the U.S. fails to lead by example, it weakens the very democratic norms it claims to defend.
They urge Congress to “turn the lights back on,” demand compliance with the law, and restore U.S. credibility abroad. Losing the WPS agenda, they conclude, “isn’t just about gender. It’s about power, peace, and whether America still has the will to lead by example.”
Opinion: America’s bipartisan peace agenda is going dark, along with US leadership
In other news
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan has agreed to a U.S.-backed humanitarian ceasefire proposal as famine, cholera outbreaks, and mass displacement grip the country. [The Independent]
U.S. President Donald Trump will skip the G20 summit in South Africa, saying the host country should no longer be part of the bloc for its discrimination of its white minority. [BBC]
Canada could lose its status of having eliminated measles after cases of the viral disease started reappearing in October 2024, making it the first Western country to drop from the list. [The New York Times]
Sign up to Newswire for an inside look at the biggest stories in global development.
About the author
Helen Murphy
Helen is an award-winning journalist and Senior Editor at Devex, where she edits coverage on global development in the Americas. Based in Colombia, she previously covered war, politics, financial markets, and general news for Reuters, where she headed the bureau, and for Bloomberg in Colombia and Argentina, where she witnessed the financial meltdown. She started her career in London as a reporter for Euromoney Publications before moving to Hong Kong to work for a daily newspaper.
