Trending: blending

MEETING the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals will require additional investments of $2.5 trillion a year in things like health care and education for the world’s poorest people, according to UNCTAD, a UN agency. A further $13.5 trillion is needed by 2030 to implement the Paris climate accord, according to the International Energy Agency, a watchdog group. It is enough to drive development types to drink—which may be how they came up with the term “blended finance”, a heady cocktail of public, private and charitable money.

The phrase is being floated at all manner of gatherings, from the recent meetings of the IMF and the World Bank to the World Economic Forum in Davos, as a way to make the limited pool of money available for worthy causes go further. The new name notwithstanding, however, the idea of using public funds to attract private money is a venerable one. For it to change development finance fundamentally, as enthusiasts claim it can, it will have to become easier to scale up.