Bilal Anwar
The Fourth Conference on Financing for Development concluded recently in Seville, Spain, with a bold call for action to reshape the global financing architecture to support sustainable development at scale. The resulting document, titled the Seville Commitments, reflects some of the pressing concerns of developing countries including calling for a more balanced, responsive, and equitable financial system. Reforming, rather democratizing, the multilateral development banks (MDBs) and emphasis on enhancing the scale and access to financing for development. The outcome also much more explicitly recognized disproportionate impacts of climate change, mounting debt challenges, pandemics and how these interconnected challenges manifest and exacerbate financial challenges for developing countries to which Pakistan is also a victim. But as always, the true test lies not in the rhetoric but in implementation.
For countries like Pakistan, still reeling from the economic and human toll of the 2022 floods, the stakes are unquestionably high. Despite being among the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, Pakistan receives less than 0.5% of global climate finance and also ranks low at other forms of concessional development finance. The Seville Commitments provide an important policy moment but only if translated into real mechanisms that deliver financial flows to the most vulnerable, especially smallholder farmers, micro-enterprises, and disaster-affected communities in remotest areas of the country.
Among the most prominent demands echoed loudly in Seville were long-standing calls from the Global South to reform MDBs. The message was clear: MDBs must move beyond technical assistance and conventional loans to take on actual financial risk in an exceedingly uncertain world. Instruments like first-loss capital, junior tranches and risk guarantees need to be more vigorously and smartly applied into the conventional financial instrument list of these financing institutions, the most viable way to address the challenge of addressing the multidimensional challenge of economic growth and climate resilience building.
Pakistan should stand firmly with other developing nations in pushing this agenda. But it must also walk the talk at home.
We know that too many promising initiatives in Pakistan fail to move beyond the concept stage. Not only due to a lack of financing but also because of weak project structuring and limited regulatory support. If we are to turn public sector initiatives into investable opportunities, they must be designed with a financier’s and investor’s lens, featuring clear revenue models, measurable outcomes and reliable implementation frameworks.
This demands nothing short of a complete overhaul of our current approach to project development and financing. Rather than continuing with fragmented, small-scale pilot projects, Pakistan needs to shift to a more programmatic approach tightly aligned with its prevailing and future challenges and national priorities. It can be achieved by creating pooled financing vehicles that aggregate resilient infrastructure investments across key sectors like climate-smart agriculture, urban resilience and renewable energy and many more.
A practical step forward would be the establishment of a National Resilience Financing Facility. A dedicated platform backed by multilateral anchor capital and donor guarantees and domestic financing and institutional assurances. This could catalyze large-scale private sector investments, while many national institutions like the National Disaster Risk Management Fund (NDRMF) can play a key intermediary role, stepping ahead in offering early-stage grants, technical assistance, and deal structuring support and continuous transactional services to a broad range of investors, entrepreneurs and innovative project developers.
This may sound like an abstract theory. But in Seville, these types of innovations and out-of- box solutions resonated strongly due to a primary reason that conventional development and climate finance models are not fit for the purpose anymore. Such as blended finance models, risk-sharing instruments, and resilience bonds, were widely discussed as the future of climate finance for developing countries.
Imagine an investment vehicle, co-funded by NDRMF and backed by MDBs apportioning of finance and guarantees financing solar-powered irrigation systems in Sindh, or hybrid insurance-financing packages for small and medium enterprises in flood-prone regions. Even nature-based solutions like mangrove restoration could become investable and promisingly profitable asset classes with the right structure in place.
These are precisely the kinds of climate-aligned, bankable solutions Pakistan must begin piloting. But doing so requires a sharper project pipeline, stronger national platforms, and clearer risk-sharing arrangements.
The appetite for climate investment in the Global South exists. The world is watching for credible country-led platforms and practical financing models. Pakistan has the opportunity and the moral responsibility to internalize these initiatives at home and export internationally. The commitments made in Seville must not remain lofty declarations.
From Seville to Sindh and beyond, it’s time to build the systems that can turn promises into progress.
The writer is an International Climate Policy and Sustainable Development Professional and is the CEO of the National Disaster Risk Management Fund)
