Opinion: The ‘spirit of Monterrey’ is key to financing a better future

Diplomats who participated in building the Monterrey Consensus on financing for development in Mexico often recall the duty they felt to deliver meaningful results following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. At the time, New York was still under the debris and the international community sought to bring back some kind of hope in the arena; and the newly initiated war on terror cast a heavy shadow on the world. To deliver results at a 2025 financing for development conference, ambitions need to be raised to match the challenges we face today. The emblematic “spirit of Monterrey” upheld an unlikely consensus that became a milestone for international development cooperation in 2002: reaffirming the traditional donors’ famous commitment to raise official development assistance, or ODA, to 0.7% of their national income. Aside from the international conferences on Financing for Development, or FfD, no other multilateral forum reunites the Group of Seven and Group of 20 major economies, the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank to discuss a general framework for financing sustainable development. A new chapter of the saga is being written. The foreword took shape in the recent Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact and was read out loud during the high-level dialogue for FfD last September at the halfway point of the Sustainable Development Goals and its harsh reality of a financing gap estimated at $3.9 trillion a year — with only 15% of SDG targets on track. There, Mexico’s new Foreign Ministry announced its intention to co-host with Spain the Fourth International Conference on FfD in 2025, “FfD4.” Along the way, in the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’ attempt to turbocharge the SDGs, the Summit for the Future is set to address converging issues with a sense of ambition as of 2024; including how to measure progress beyond GDP, effective multilateralism, and the reform of the international financial architecture (the “what”). For its part, FfD4 is called upon to advance in the adoption of a U.N. convention on tax and a binding treaty on business and human rights. Countries could also decide on a sovereign debt workout mechanism (building up on the Bridgetown Initiative); health and education expenditures; reconfigure international development cooperation; and the reform of the international financial architecture (the “how”), including the required rechanneling of the Special Drawing Rights. The importance of rallying around financing for development International conferences on FfD have left their mark on global development history. The first one in Monterrey in 2002 built a consensus to overcome the aid “fatigue.” Overshadowed by the global financial crisis in 2008, the second in Doha set the table for a third in Addis Ababa in 2015. There, the necessity of catalyzing private sector investments — moving from billions to trillions — became a new dogma, a few months before adopting the 2030 Agenda. This continuum of international cooperation around financing for development addressed the means of implementation of the Millennium Development Goals and then the Sustainable Development Goals, providing a general framework for aligning financing flows and policies with economic, social, and environmental priorities. Now, amidst a global polycrisis, much more is needed for the new installment of the FfD conferences to deliver. They will not solve the climate emergency, stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, remedy the war in Israel and Palestine, avoid the migratory disaster, or stop democracy’s erosion in most countries. Nonetheless, a new consensus to finance global efforts for sustainable development would contribute to restoring trust in the multilateral system and reverse the setbacks of our generation. Poverty is a major source of conflict everywhere, and the number of people living in extreme poverty is higher than it was in 2019, pre-COVID-19. Estimates show that 165 million people fell into poverty between 2020-2023 as debt servicing crowded out social protection, health, and education expenditures. If current trends continue, 575 million people will still be living in extreme poverty in 2030 — far from the global goal to eradicate it. Success at the Fourth International Conference on FfD The world needs good news and relevant progress toward a better future. The key to success for the Fourth International Conference on FfD in 2025, to get the SDGs back on track, might be found in the same ground that hosted the first FfD conference 21 years ago. Mexico as a co-host is a country with a long tradition and unquestionable commitment to international diplomacy, often serving as a bridge between high- and lower-income countries that struggle to talk and understand each other. However, let us remember that Mexico’s foreign policy has shifted under its current government, moving far from the one in charge of negotiating the Monterrey Consensus. In 2002, it proactively strengthened its presence in human rights and democracy multilateral fora. Nowadays, there has been a return of the Estrada doctrine — a domestic guideline to justify neutrality and principles of nonintervention — taking clear stands against the Evo Morales coup in 2019 and the Pedro Castillo coup in 2022, while revitalizing relations with Cuban and Venezuelan authorities. It has also limited its formerly diversified cooperation with its continent, within the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or CELAC, and through its attempts to maintain a constructive partnership with the U.S. at all costs despite its various discrepancies with Washington. Yet even without having led a global development process for almost a decade, when it hosted the first High-Level Meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation in 2014, few countries are as well placed as Mexico to facilitate a discussion on FfD. I remember Mexico being perceived in 2014 as an undercover agent of official development assistance providers eager to obtain BRICs’ endorsement of the aid effectiveness agenda, which although it failed to achieve, showed that its potential to build bridges was still recognized. Ever since, Mexico seems determined to become a key player from the current global south, distancing itself from OECD, which has contributed to the fall of the aid effectiveness norm, and announcing its intention to rejoin the G77+China. If we aim to deliver in 2025, we must revive the “spirit of Monterrey” to succeed in building a new economic consensus that paves the way for the next global goals, drawing on the historic duty to reform the international financial architecture in favor of the countries that need it most.