Publications

The world is facing a sustainable development crisis. The 2024 Financing for Sustainable Development Report: Financing for Development at a Crossroads finds that financing challenges are at the heart of the crisis and imperil the SDGs and climate action. The window to rescue the SDGs and prevent a climate catastrophe is still open but closing rapidly.

Financing gaps for sustainable development are large and growing – the estimates by international organizations and others are coalescing around $4 trillion additional investment needed annually for developing countries. This represents a more than 50% increase over the pre-pandemic estimates. Meanwhile, the finance divide has not…

Population ageing is an inevitable outcome of the demographic transition — the historic shift from higher to lower levels of fertility and mortality that yields a period of rapid population increase and, eventually, an older population that is much larger as a share of the total. While more developed countries have completed or are well advanced in this transition, less and least developed countries (LDCs) are predominantly in the early or middle stages, when the older population is still small but starting to grow. Such countries can anticipate a continuing, gradual increase in both the number and the share of older persons, many of whom will require substantial care and support at some…