This session will discuss the possibility of launching a new global alliance for sustainable investment, the World Investment for Development Alliance (WIDA), to support greater collaboration on investment issues. Leading actors who can help shape this new initiative will be invited to share their perspectives.
The backdrop to this project is that the world has been undergoing a series of profound changes, brought on by industrial transformation, technological shifts, societal evolution, geopolitical competition and the COVID-19 pandemic. International investment can tie together and strengthen economies throughout these changes, making the global community stronger rather than weaker. However, international investment flows have changed form, and in many cases declined with FDI falling globally by 35% in 2020 putting their contribution to sustainable development at risk.
At the same time, there are trillions of dollars in sustainable finance waiting to capitalize a rebound in greenfield FDI if enabling policies and measures are put in place. We see this potential with the burst of recent mergers and acquisitions around the world, which in the first half of 2021 alone, surpassed all of 2020.
Many intergovernmental organizations, business entities, academic initiatives and civil society groups are working to support international investment and its sustainable development outcomes through enabling frameworks. Yet there is potential to better leverage these efforts, so that individual activities lead to more than the sum of the parts.
This can include collaboration on public-private projects to enable action on sustainable investment (EASI projects) that identify and address limiting factors to growing sustainable investment flows.
Issues to be addressed
- How can organizations best work together to achieve the shared objective of growing sustainable investment?
- What are the elements to consider, moving forward, to create a mechanism for collaboration?
- How should public-private collaboration be designed, including to help achieve sustainability goals?
Speaker(s)
Moderator(s)
