Multilateral development banks collectively claim $437 billion in climate finance investments between 2021 and 2024. But $71 billion remains untraceable to projects. In this blog, Ella Remande-Guyard explains why this transparency shortfall matters, and how our updated MDB climate finance dataset can help to understand exactly where climate finance is being directed.
2025 has been a turbulent year for international development. Aid budgets shrank, climate finance demands surged, and political pressure on development agencies – particularly in the United States – intensified. Against this backdrop, at Publish What You Fund we redoubled our efforts to defend open data, strengthen transparency norms, and equip policymakers, civil society and citizens with the information they need to protect development effectiveness. The core pillars of our new strategy – to make aid transparency bigger, better and louder – shaped our interventions throughout the year, from climate finance to localisation to development finance. Here we round up our key activities and achievements.
After years of patient technical work by the small team of experts behind the Global Emerging Markets (GEMS) Risk Database, a significant breakthrough has just been announced. The use of GEMS data in credit risk assessments might just have unlocked $600 billion in new lending capacity for multilateral development banks.
In this update, Ryan Anderton highlights the changing landscape of DFI climate finance, shares insights from the 2025 DFI Transparency Index, and outlines his hopes for future progress.
In May, we released our Metrics Matter III report, which found that major donors are still only directing a tiny portion of their funding to local organisations. Our findings provided the springboard to a broader discussion on what’s holding locally led development back – and what needs to change. In this blog, Henry Lewis reflects on the conversation among civil society leaders, donors, and policy experts, and where we go from here.
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.
