Blistering heat, empty chairs and the C-word mar UN's flagship development event

Straits Times

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during the opening segment of the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development, in Seville, Spain, June 30, 2025. REUTERS/Claudia Greco
SEVILLE - Brutal heat scorched Spain this week, a blistering reminder of the climate change that is battering the world's poorest countries - stretching their finances even as government debt climbs to new heights.
But at a once-a-decade UN development finance conference in Seville, two key ingredients were in less abundance: money and power.
Just one G7 leader - France's Emmanuel Macron - attended the event, where he and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez addressed rooms filled with dozens of empty chairs. Organisers initially said they expected 70 heads of state; that was whittled to 50 as the conference got underway.
Back in Washington, Paris, London and Berlin, rich-country leaders are slashing aid and cutting bilateral lending in a pivot to defence spending and rising debt at home.
"The mood is ... I would say realistic, but also a sense of unity and of pragmatism," said Alvaro Lario, president of the International Fund of Agricultural Development, adding the question on everyone's mind this week was how to do more with less.
"How can we come together, or think out of the box, or create new type of ways of really stretching it more?"
The Financing For Development meeting is a flagship UN conference, charting the trajectory to help tackle changes the world must make to tax policies, aid spending or key areas such as debt, health and education. Its outcomes guide global aid funding and UN policies for the decade to come.
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EMPTY CHAIRS, MISSING LEADERS
Few disagree over the need for action; hundred-year floods and storms are happening with alarming regularity, and rising debt-servicing costs are siphoning money away from health, education and infrastructure spending in the developing world.
But even top developing-world leaders Mia Mottley, the Barbados prime minister and prominent global climate champion, and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, currently chairing the Group of 20 major economies, backed out of the event at the last minute.
The media room was stacked with bored-looking Spanish press gossiping about a domestic political scandal while disillusioned civil-society leaders stalked the halls, upset with the watered-down agenda and the lack of fiscal or political firepower.
"We are facing a backsliding of many agendas that we had advanced a few years ago," said Henrique Frota, director of ABONG, a Brazilian association of NGOs. "Developed countries are reducing their investment in (official development assistance) and European countries are not fulfilling their commitment ... they are giving less and less money right now for every kind of agenda."
Event leaders were relieved to produce an outcome document - despite gnawing fears in the past months that Washington would torpedo any deal.
In the end, U.S. officials backed out altogether.
"The entire community was very afraid of coming here because one country wasn't attending," said UN Assistant Secretary General Marcos Neto. "But the document ended up working out ... I'm leaving happy, with more optimism than I thought I would leave with."
Neto highlighted significant steps toward implementing climate and development goals, including the Seville Platform and multiple agreements from public and private sectors to leverage funds for the biggest possible impact.
The Seville Commitment included tripling multilateral lending capacity, debt relief, a push to boost tax-to-GDP ratios to at least 15%, and get more rich countries to let the IMF use "special drawing rights" money for countries that need it most.
But in Seville, only host nation Spain signed on to commit 50% of its "Special Drawing Rights" for the purpose.
THE C-WORD
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed acknowledged that the attendance was not as star-studded as hoped, and that public funds are under pressure.
"But there's innovative financing, there's the private sector, there's the triple lending of MDBs ... so the resources are there," she said.
"We just have to have the political will to leverage through these mechanisms that have come out of the platform of action and continue moving with them."
U.S. President Donald Trump, despite his country's absence, loomed large over the event; his climate change scepticism, hostility toward diversity initiatives and pledge to review U.S. participation in multilateral organizations made some keen to strip the "c-word" - climate change - and rebrand initiatives as focused on resilience, education or health.
Still, some say the gloomy backdrop should not deter leaders focused on progress.
"Ultimately the important thing is doing it," said Jose Vinals, former group chairman of Standard Chartered and co-chair of both the FFD4 Business Steering Committee and the Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance.
"The private sector is, for the most part, still willing to walk the talk." REUTERS