Samantha Attridge and Gary Forster discuss the critical role of transparency in achieving development and climate finance goals, and preview this year’s DFI Transparency Index, highlighting where we’re looking for breakthroughs, and where stumbling blocks may remain.
The forthcoming 2025 DFI Transparency Index includes most of the world’s leading bilateral and multilateral development finance institutions (DFIs). However, a group of seven bilateral DFIs with trillions of dollars in assets are not included. Why? The top line answer is that their levels of transparency are so low that no meaningful assessment is possible. This blog explores some of those unassessed DFIs, where their disclosure practices fall short, and the real world consequences of this lack of transparency.
Today, we are launching Metrics Matter III: Counting Local, the third instalment in our Metrics Matter research series tracking direct funding to local organisations. Our findings reveal that despite strong rhetoric, donor funding practices have yet to meaningfully reflect the localisation agenda.
As more public finance is channelled to the private sector in the name of development, we need to know: are these investments genuinely adding value, or are they just substituting what the market could do on its own? This is where additionality comes in: the idea that ODA should only be used when it delivers something that private capital cannot.
Our latest research explores how well donors and their bilateral DFIs are disclosing the additionality of their private sector instrument (PSI) investments using the new OECD-DAC reporting requirements.
Multilateral climate funds play a crucial role in channelling significant portions of climate finance and will be key in efforts to meet the new $300 billion goal. But what do we know about how this climate finance is deployed, who receives it and the impact it’s having? To gain an insight into the transparency of these funds we have investigated the four largest multilateral climate funds: the Green Climate Fund, Global Environment Facility, Climate Investment Funds, and Adaptation Fund.
As traditional aid shrinks, non-ODA financial flows are increasingly crucial. Their transparency, however, lags far behind. In this blog, Tessie San Martin, George Ingram and Sally Paxton assert that better visibility into non-ODA flows will unlock smarter investments and stronger outcomes. Therefore, extending transparency is essential to ensure new development funding achieves real impact
