ONE UN - Financing Localization of SDGs through Integrating Local Financing Frameworks and Instruments (Local2030 Coalition) (WUF13)

Good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you for attending this session.
I Rabo, I'm the deputy head of the Local 2030 coalition Secretariat in Bilbao.
It's a pleasure to welcome you all keynote speaker panelists, and of course, all the friends here in the room.
I Survey warm welcome to this session on local financing for sustainable urban futures and thanks again for joining.
For those who are less familiar, let me just quickly introduce that the local 2030 coalition is bringing together 14 UN entities alongside member states, local and regional governments, civil society, academia, the private sector and youth working together to accelerate the localization of SDGs.
So the coalition is increasingly recognized in the system as a key platform within the UN AT reform agenda, but also helping because of helping drive greater coherence, efficiency, and impact across the UN system and translating ultimately the 2030 agenda into tangible results on the ground.
So in doing so, coalition members have been pioneer in a way of working.
So it's kind of bringing the UN system together with local actors to create systemic scalable solutions with real impact on the ground, right? This shift, it's fundamentally about territorial transformations and bringing global ambition with local reality much in it and ensuring that SDGs are not just only agreed at the local level, but also delivered where people are living.
So this is bringing us to the central challenge we are grappling with today, and it is one of the most critical barriers for SDG's progress to remain clear, which is limited access to predictable, flexible financing at the local level.
So, too often, and we all know this, local governments who are at the forefront of the implementation remain disconnected from the scale and the structure of financing needed to deliver their priorities, right? And that is precisely why the Local 2030 coalition working group two, coed by UNDP, UNEP, and UNICEF, with the participation of ECA and Young habitat, it's focusing their intense work on financing for SDG transitions at the local level and when they have convened today's discussion, and we are all very thankful for their presence here.
So this work has already give products, give results, and shaped key global efforts through the road to Seville, the local way process, and the Seville platform of action, we have launched with Spain and the OECD means of better channeling finance towards local impacts through very concrete collective actions, right? And central of this effort, of course, and I finished with this, it's the multi level governance aligning national, local, and partner efforts around a set of priorities and territorial approaches.
Because ultimately, local finance is development finance, if it's a lock in at a scale, essential delivering of SDGs, and Because of that and we will discuss about this, this is required that we move beyond a little bit from the classic fragmented approaches into more integrated frameworks that can turn local priorities into investable pipelines, bankable solutions at the local level.
Today, colleagues, friends, we will hear from partners in various levels of government, as well as UN system partners of the working groups.
And how we can bridge that persistent financing gaps and move from those fragmented supports to coordinated and investable solutions.
I would like to first give or pass, let's say, the digital floor to a video that the government of Spain has provided with some opening remarks coming from Collin, Director General for Sustainable Development Policies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
So if you could please put it on the screen.
Thank you.
We have the opportunity to inaugurate this high level event at the 13th World Urban Forum.
Spain welcomes this debate on local financing for sustainable urban futures and reiterate its firm commitment with localization of the SDGs as a key tool for its effective and accelerated implementation and as a clear priority for us connected to our engagement with locally led development.
Allow me also to add that we consider this meeting particularly timely for two reasons.
First, in a global context marked with fragmentation, uncertainty, and growing pressure on multilaterlism, this is a critical moment for delivering on the financing for development agenda.
With only four years remaining to deliver on the 2030 agenda, there is still a significant financing gap to fulfill the promises that we all made back in 2015.
Second, because it reminds us of the central role that local actors play in implementing the SDGs and consequently, of the need to ensure their access to financing.
Their actions and work are essential for achieving the 17 SDGs, including a new urban agenda for resilient cities and communities, and yet they continue to face significant financial constraints which undermine their capacity to transform the realities of citizens' daily lives.
Spain is aware of the serious challenges posed by this under financing and has pushed forward solutions in the framework of the fourth International Conference on financing for Development.
In this sense, we collectively succeeded to ensure that the civilian commitment, the compromise of the civilia recognized the need to strengthen the financing of subnational entities, including a set of measures aimed at reinforcing their capacities.
Moreover, Spain, together with the local 2030 coalition and the OECD launched within the Sovia platform for action, the initiative localizing finance to generate systemic impact and achieve the objectives of the 2030 agenda, now endorsed by a diverse group of governments, international organizations, civil society, private sector, and academic entities, the commitment and continued engagement of which I would like to commend.
The goal of this initiative is to scale up efforts to channel more resources to the local level and to ensure that they are used in an efficient, inclusive, and transformative manner.
Today, we can affirm that this initiative is no longer only a coordination platform, but it is consolidating itself as an operational tool that is helping to transform the way financing reaches territories and local communities for sustainable development truly take shape.
Indeed, just a few weeks ago, during the Ecos Forum on financing for Development, we held the first political and operational stock taking exercise of the initiative, only a few months after its launch in 2025.
This meeting confirms several key elements.
First, that localizing funding must be placed at the very center of the international financing for development agenda, and second, that we are already witnessing concrete reforms and innovative mechanisms that are being implemented in different countries.
Therefore, strengthening local fiscal systems, digitalizing municipal revenue collection, developing pipelines of bankable projects, introducing new risk mitigation instruments, and advancing integrated local financing frameworks.
At the same time, it was clear that major structural challenges still persist, limited fiscal space, difficulties in accessing adequate and timely finance, as well as capacity and data gaps at the territorial level.
This is why the initiative seeks to move beyond pilot projects towards scalable solutions, connecting political leadership, financial frameworks, and territorial investment portfolios.
In parallel, together with the joint SDG fund and the Secretariat of the Local 2030 coalition, we have worked on other key resource mobilization tools to improve and strengthen local financing.
I would like to highlight in that sense, the localization marker at 2.0, which makes it possible to integrate the local perspective into the financing of feed level projects from design through implementation and the Build output camp, whose second edition will be held this June in Spain and which will mobilize resources for the implementation of localization projects in 20 partner countries.
All of these underscores Spain's commitment with local financing and its determination to continue working to expand and strengthen the capacities of regional and local governments, thereby accelerating the realization of the 2030 agenda.
Spain is looking forward to continue working with the UN, international organizations, and the subnational entities, and with all of you to build a form of multilateralism that can translate global commitments into real effective changes in people's lives.
I thank you.
Thank you very much.
Let me just take a second to note the great support that the government is providing to the Local 30 coalition and its Secretariat and also their leadership in the civil platform of action in the boot camp that is happening from the ninth to the 11th in Bilbao and that it's inspired by two tools Director General mentioned, the localization blueprint and the localization market.
And just to note that.
Let me now introduce our keynote speaker, miss Vincent Pickup of UBS, Deputy Assistant Administrator and Deputy Director of the Bureau of for Policy and Program Support, the United Nations Development Program.
And prior to appointment, miss Pickup was resident representative in Serbia and resident representative also Co Director in India and Deputy Count Director in Indonesia long career.
Thank you very much.
You four.
Did you say I had a long career? Can you hear me in a good way? Thank you very much and thank you to Spain's government for the political courage and the consistent partnership that made this moment possible today.
We are at the World Urban Forum, a forum about housing, about where the cities and territories that are growing the fastest can finance the infrastructure, the affordable housing, and the services that people need.
The gap between what local governments must invest in and what they can actually mobilize will not close through fragmented project pipelines.
It requires a different architecture entirely.
That architecture is what governments seated here today are beginning to construct.
They are building integrated local financing frameworks.
Integrated local financing strategy is not project by project, not sector by sector, but systematically linking financing decisions to government structures, service delivery commitments, and measurable outcomes on climate, on poverty, health, nature, gender, and social equity.
And they are doing so against real headwinds, fiscal constraints, institutional fragmentation, and a development finance system that is designed for national governments, not for cities, not for provinces or island economies, and the UN system is rising to support them.
Let me start with that political moment.
Last year, the fourth International Conference on Financing for Development adopted the compromiso de Sevilla.
Intergovernmental outcome that moves the system from commitments to delivery, including by giving prominence to the sub national dimension of development finance.
Under the Seville platform for action, more than 130 voluntary initiatives were launched.
Among them, localizing development finance for SDG I co launched by Spain, the Local 2030 coalition, and OECD with a target of 40 integrated local financing frameworks by 2030.
This is not a recommendation, this is a commitment to respond to governments already strengthening their financing frameworks unlocking public and private investment, including those represented here today.
Spain deserves particular acknowledgment.
The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Basque government, and the Bilbao City Council have been hosting the Bilbao boot camp, now in its second edition, as was just mentioned, where local governments translate territorial priorities into bankable investment programs.
Nine proposals are in active development, targeting 163 million in mobilized finance.
The Local 2030 coalition is the UN systems operational expression of this commitment.
UNDP, UN Environment Program, UNICEF and UN Habitat are bringing their complementary mandates to one table around shared priorities defined by the local governments themselves.
And bringing that commitment into reality requires political will, but it requires more than just political will.
It also requires the architecture.
Today, integrated national financing frameworks, the INFFs are being used in over 90 different countries to align financing flows with the SDGs.
Through the dedicated Civil platform for action, governments and UN agencies have committed to bringing that same level of discipline and focus to the sub national level through these 40 integrated local financing frameworks by 2030.
So what the INFF, the integrated national financing frameworks do for national governments, that is aligning the full spectrum of financial flows, international, domestic, public, private, with development planning, the local integrated financing frameworks do for local and subnational governments.
It's domestic revenues, intergovernmental transfers, private capital, international climate finance aligned with governance structures, connecting financing choices to service delivery targets and outcomes that people really need.
The keyword here, we've heard a lot the last day is systemic, not a project, not a fund.
Integrated local financing frameworks are an architecture that strengthens the fiscal coherence between what local governments raise, spend, and borrow and that directs scarce resources to the areas with the highest impact where the development priorities are attracting rather than substituting for private and international capital.
We're going to hear today from some of the most outstanding examples, we're going to hear from, I think the example from Punjab, the example from Mexico.
But I want to just mention one example, which is Zanzibar, which really challenges the assumption that financing frameworks are a luxury of well resourced or large governments.
A small island economy with limited fiscal space has produced East Africa's first integrated sub national financing framework, catalyzing 150 million in a sovereign Sukuk Islamic bond and mobilizing over 5 billion in investment.
Very impressive.
And UNDP's evidence across our country programs points to one consistent finding.
When financing decisions are embedded in governance structures and responsive to territorial priorities, they generate impact that is fundamentally different at scale across all the development outcomes, poverty, climate, access to services, institutional capacity.
The ILFF, the integrated local Financing framework, is the mechanism through which local development priorities become investable.
And through which UNDP, working with our UN partners and the local 2030 coalition, constructure support around what territories actually need, not what we happen to be able to offer.
My colleague Geordie is going to speak more to this, but let me just close with the following.
The Seville commitment gives us the political momentum The ILFF, the integrated local financing approach gives us the operational tools.
The Bilbau boot camp provides the pipeline model and the local finance forums are the marketplace where all of this converges at the country level.
What we need is stronger responsiveness to local priorities and deeper partnerships across more contexts.
At UNDP, we are committed to aligning our country presence and our financing expertise to what territories really actually need and to show up alongside our partners as one coherent offer.
This is what families in cities, in provinces, in islands where we work actually need.
I look forward to this conversation.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Speak up, Francine, for your career, but also for your critical framing of this important topic and discussion.
I would like now to call the panelists to start this conversation, right? First of all, um, Um, we do have an online intervention, but sorry, first of all, I would like to invite Mr.
Mohammed Mahmoud to start the panel with his intervention and he's spoons.
He's coming from the ministry with finance strategies, governance architecture, remaining gaps.
He's coming from the Ministry of Housing and Works, Pakistan, right? And each one of the panels have received some guiding questions for the conversation.
I would like to encourage panelists to somehow follow this in a way that we can frame the discussion as much as possible.
Mr.
Mahmoud when ready.
Thanks.
You want me to speak from Up to you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Sustainable urban development cannot be achieved without sustainable urban financing.
Cities today are at the center of economic growth, climate adaptation, infrastructure demand, and social transformation.
Yet, many local governments, particularly in developing countries continue to face serious financing constraints.
The Slavic Republic of Pakistan recognizes that financing sustainable urban feature requires strong local institutions, innovative financing mechanisms, improved municipal revenue systems, and enhanced partnerships between governments, development partners, and the private sector.
Pakistan is among the rapidly urbanizing countries in the region.
Rapid urban growth has significantly increased demand for housing, transport, water supply, sanitation, waste management, and climate resilient infrastructure.
However, municipal institutions often face limited fiscal space, weak revenue generation systems, and growing service delivery pressures.
To address these challenges, government of Pakistan is pursuing reforms and developing systems aimed at strengthening urban governance and expanding financing mechanisms for sustainable urban development.
Under the emerging National Housing Policy and Housing Sector roadmap, the Ministry of Housing and Works is focusing on strengthening urban financing systems, promoting affordable housing finance, encouraging public private partnerships, digitizing land and property systems, improving land value capture mechanisms, and supporting climate resilient urban infrastructure investments.
Pakistan believes that local governments must be financially empowered to effectively deliver sustainable urban services.
Strengthening municipal finance systems, improving property taxation frameworks, modernizing land administration, and enhancing local revenue mobilization are therefore critical priorities.
At the same time, innovative financing instruments are increasingly important.
For addressing urban infrastructure and housing needs.
Pakistan is working to promote mortgage finance expansion, blended finance mechanisms, housing microfinance, municipal private sector partnerships, climate and green financing, and investment friendly urban development frameworks.
In the recent past, the government of Pakistan and the government of Punjab has separately launched two initiatives of making sure that the communities have affordable housing to access through subsidized financing and partnership with financial institutions and developers.
The annual outlay for the Gomada Pakistan is going to be around $1 billion, whereby they are going to ensure that the poor people are able to afford financing for the housing.
Similarly, the Gomada of Punjab has launched a program which have outlay of around $500 million every year.
These two programs aim at reorganizing the mortgage markets which are already shrinked, high risk, and cost intensive.
The governments are leveraging technology to make these transactions efficient and affordable for the common man.
We look forward to the development partners and international experiences that can help and support developing systems to make these programs successful.
The Ministry of Housing and Works is also engaging with international financial institutions and development partners to strengthen long term housing finance systems.
Recently, port has been sought for strengthening the Pakistan mortgage refinance company to facilitate affordable and concessional financing for low and middle income households under markup subsidy scheme.
Pakistan also recognizes the importance of linking local financing with climate resilience.
Developing countries are increasingly facing urban floods, heat stress, environmental degradation, and infrastructure vulnerabilities caused by climate change.
Access to climate finance and resilient urban investment therefore remains essential.
In this regard, development cooperation and donor partnerships play a vital role in supporting sustainable urban futures.
Pakistan values its collaboration with institutions such as the World Bank, UN Habitat, development agencies, and bilateral partners for urban upgrading, municipal strengthening, resilient housing, and climate adaptation initiatives.
We believe that sustainable urban financing must move beyond fragmenting sectoral approaches.
Integrated urban investment strategies that connect housing, transport, municipal services, livelihoods, and environmental sustainability are essential for building resilient and inclusive cities.
The future of sustainable development will increasingly depend on the financial resilience and institutional capacities of cities and local governments.
Pakistan remains committed to strengthening local financing systems, expanding affordable housing and infrastructure investments, and promoting inclusive and climate resilient urban development in line with the new urban agenda and sustainable development goals.
We look forward to continued international cooperation and knowledge sharing to build sustainable urban futures for all.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mohamed, for this clear understanding of the local finance and systems that you are really pushing and it's completely strategic vision that the country has and is showing us that the solutions are there and very often at the territorial level and we need to grab them in.
So that I apologize.
I didn't read the guiding question before your intervention, but I think it has been perfectly clear how you addressed very concretely the solutions that the country Pakistan is pushing forward.
Thank you very much.
Let me now after this intervention, pass the floor to Ana Fernandes eros the technical secretary of Conoon in Mexico and since connected online, Ola, Buenos Dias in Mexico.
I Ana Fernanda will be sharing with us her experience on revenue mobilization, investment priorities, and also the private sector role, which is an important one in the case of an experience of Na Leon.
We also have some guiding questions for her, and this time, let me share them with you.
The first one refers about what is the gap between your government investment priorities and the revenues, you can mobilize through fiscal instruments.
What are the specific priorities, if you can say that are being deferred as a result? The second question if you have time to address it would be what has limited your government's ability to engage with private capital beyond the traditional grants.
It's primarily a risk perception problem, a pipeline quality problem, or maybe a structuring problem.
Anna Fernandes.
Good morning here.
So weeks ago, but very nice being able to be with you today.
I'm very happy to be sharing this information with you.
We were the first national government to work on measuring financing.
Sorry, just for a second.
I think we're missing a little bit the sign I just want to give you a quick context of who we are.
Can you hear us from the room? We in terms of I countries all around the world.
We have the highest G per capital in Mexico and at the same time, we have one of the largest economies in in Mexico.
Why I think we want to do this.
We wanted to first understand what the SDGs mean at the local level and then to try and articulate the efforts that we have in order to achieve these goals.
This project was meant to wait.
So.
Give me Can you listen to me now properly? Yes.
Yes, we can.
Oh, sorry.
It's just that it was connected to the Bluetooth device.
Sorry.
Go ahead, please.
Stone.
Sure.
Basically, what I wanted to say is that we tried to work with the financing framework in order to adapt it to the subnational context.
And this project, basically what it did was analyze what our current financial situation was in 2022.
Identify the gaps between our financing and the challenges solved, and then also to issue recommendations for the state.
Let me state that in this context, what I want to say is in Mexico, New On, because it has the largest GDB per capita, because it's mainly an industrialized state, because it's very close to the United States border, and it has in comparison to the rest of the country, a very autonomous budget in a way.
We don't depend as much from the federal government's budget as other states in the country do.
That makes us a very apparently strong state, but also vulnerable in terms of acquiring international financing or acquiring even national financing to push forward local goals.
Because since we have been able to do well in comparison to the rest of the country and since we have been able to be independent in a way, then it's not a priority to bring money from the outside to Novolen.
They basically say, as in Spanish, they say, scratch yourself with your own nails, do whatever you can to figure out how you finance yourself.
I mean, even though we are a strong economy in the local context or in the national context, that doesn't mean that we can push our limits beyond what we have and to be able to actually accomplish the goal we have established.
This is why this conversation and this analysis was also relevant in our local context.
So I'm going to skip this because I don't want to stay too long on the issues that we have.
But just to give you a peek to our reality, while 55% of the state population is still poor, in comparison to Mexico, this is not the largest population, right? And we have many environmental issues.
But again, in comparison to Mexico, this is not the main state in which it has complications.
So what does this brings us to? This brings us to understanding that Our financing gaps are considerable on certain issues.
Even though the state will push and has been investing and has been incrementing its own budget, it's still not enough, not even close to being enough.
One of the questions that you asked me was, what are the main gaps? Well, the main gaps is that we basically need twice our current budget in order to make it yearly, to make possible to close the gaps that we have in all the SEGs recorded of nationally.
That means in terms of Pesos is 245 million Pesos, again, twice our budget every year, our state budget.
Even though we are a growing economy, we grow an average of 5% a year, This is still not enough, and that's the economy.
The state budget has been growing.
If you see the analysis we made in terms of what have we been spending more on in certain years, we have certain issues like health care in which we used to receive money from the federal government and now we don't anymore.
So this gap has actually been increasing while we were being able to invest and create local programs, for example, for addressing cancer on childcare children and as well as in women Now the state has been left alone on funding these projects.
While we spend more in comparison to other states, we still don't have enough.
What I want to say is I don't want to present a pity case here.
I just want to present the reality of what I also think is comparable to middle income countries, middle income countries just like our state.
They're doing better than other countries and they're advancing but not fast enough to be able to reach the goals.
I'm not even talking about 20:30 anymore.
I'm talking about probably 2050 on some cases.
The reality is that we need to change or rethink our schemes on how do we open the doors for these kind of institutions and this kind of, um, how would you say entities, either a subnational government or federal government to be able to reach opportunities.
This does not necessarily mean getting direct financing.
This probably means also helping document certain practices that are doing well and helping them escalate them.
Or how do we create alliances to potentialize certain ideas and certain examples have been working well in order to make them sustainable in the long term? Because one of the biggest risks that middle income countries phase and the sub national governments like we do phase, is that we can go back in time very easily.
None of the gains that we have been making for the past ten years have necessarily consolidated already.
We still have to make them sustainable in time.
I would just like to share some conclusions and provide some ideas.
Let me say that Conlon is not a sub national government.
We are an entity that is combining the government, the academia, the private sector, and the social sector in order to provide the local government with better ideas to make better policies.
That's what we do.
In that sense, we have been working with the state government to try to think, how can we push forward what we have right now? I would like to give you four ideas that I think can work as a responsibility for us as a state, as a national government, and as an idea of how to collaborate internationally to make the closing the gap actually something feasible.
First, I would say that we would need to develop a strategy to obviously strengthen our own income, mainly through improving tax revenue, but also maybe through creating new taxes at the sub national government.
And this would be, I would say, complemented on the international level with facilitated learning from other experiences.
It doesn't necessarily have to mean money.
It has to be, how do we make this easier by learning from other successful experiences of sub national governments in federal contexts? Second, how do we, as a state, implement measures for furthering alliances with the private and international sectors? The private sectors here are very interested in making the local environment better, right? They want to attract more investment, they want to grow, and they want to live here.
So how do we work more cohesively.
On the international side is, how can you make it easier for some national governments to access knowledge, to access tools, to access financing.
In our case, We have been presented with a previous federal administration that didn't really want to interact with international arena.
How can we as a subnational government still get in touch with these opportunities without being blindsided by the federal priorities? The third area of improvement for us is how do we strengthen our own system to make public spending more efficient? As you know, this has to do with technology, mainly technology today.
I mean, if we can improve our processes and then apply technology that makes it easier, we can actually make this forward.
I'm sure that there's a lot of tools out there that can be provided for, if you can just start.
I'm about to finish.
One last idea is that national governments are great arenas for piloting things.
We can provide a fertile ground for trying and experimenting.
Let's do this together, not only in investing, but learning and escalating.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Much.
We take good note of particularly these four ideas that you mentioned, increase the income fiscal spaces, ally with the private international actors, efficiency through technology and piloting, taking the sub national space as a good place for piloting.
Thank you very much, Ma.
Let me now.
Thank you.
Move to the next speaker, Mr.
Shankar Despand it correctly? That's fine.
Yeah.
It's fine means that probably it's not that he's the Chief Investment and planning officer of the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority in India.
A as the previous speakers, we have some guiding questions to frame a little bit of conversation.
The first one is about how the intergovernmental fiscal transfer systems shape and constrain your government's ability to finance territorial priorities.
And what reforms at the national level would make the biggest difference, right? So what does the absence of multi level coordination create financing gaps.
The previous speaker also mentioned that neither local nor national actors can probably close alone.
So please.
Thank you all the organizers and my fellow panelists.
Very good evening to all of you.
Let me give you a bottoms up approach to sustainable finance.
I come from Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority, This is an authority which sparads the development about 6,500 square kilometers within Mumbai metropolitan region.
We have 20 urban local bodies within itself.
We have about 25 million people, 10 million people travel every day, and we take care of physical infratructure, social infrastructure, digital infrastructure, environmental infrastructure all together with new cities, metro, urban mobility, air quality, environmental protection, sustainable finance all together.
I have a little bit of a different approach of approaching this issue.
When we talk down from a top up approach, when we talked about the fundamentals, when you talked about getting political momentum, getting the pipeline of projects, et cetera, when we look at project implementation, that's action on the ground.
So when we look at action on the ground and implementing sustainable development goals for a country happens at action on the ground.
At a city level or at a regional level.
And when we look at finance, when we look at it, it's basically about capacity building at the urban local body, which has to be a tick box if you want to really achieve everything because there is very low capacity of structuring a project for achieving financial success and acumen.
Secondly, are we having access to global markets? When we use the word local, I think it becomes technically impossible for local governments to approach multilateral funding or to leverage, in fact, finances from the private sector because of the I think the statutory framework, perhaps, which is there in every state at regional level.
But let me give you a good experience of MRD.
ARD started with land as its capital and we have infrastructure led development as our model and we raise our own finances, we leverage the land, and the huge impact of the infrastructure which is there on land is slowly captured.
By various small amount of levies.
I would like to give some examples around it.
When we construct Metro, we need initial finance to raise it.
We go to multilaterals, do the borrowing, do the state guarantees, get the loan.
However, when we start implementing, we are also aware that there are transactions of real estates happening along the corridors, and there's a land value capture which is gaining around it.
And then we slowly add the development charge.
So any development which takes place within the city, within this particular area by statute has to pay a particular amount to the MRDA.
That's my organization.
We slowly start collecting that delta.
And because there are many transactions happen, the stamp duty, the ready ign, the additional FSI, that is the additional potential we should give, if you want to actually increase the transit oriented development, And when we say that the densities are actually good if they are well planned and well and designed and the quality of city is good and we actually achieve more sustainable development goals will people walk to the place, livable places, the habitation is good, the poor get the good affordable housing, that's inclusive housing, all that is happening in the city and we're aching sustainable development goals.
We also collect simultaneously the revenues around this and we sell to the developers, the development potential on a particular plot because it's having proximity to areas.
Now all of this slowly start coming into MRDL.
MRD then leverages it for multiple borrowing and also as a pipeline of funding, pipeline of projects.
The good thing is that when we have good projects, competitive type of bidding, very transparent, open ways of structuring and financing, we have access to the great financial companies or institutions across the world.
So we went to a World Economic Forum, and we had a lot of collaborations, and in the last two to three years, we have access Mumbai metropolitan region, by the way, is a $150 billion economy today.
We have an economic master plan which sits on the transport master plan, which also has an environmental master plan, which also has a land use master plan.
So all of these plans when sit together in Mumbai is transforming.
And when we see the reshaping, rebooting, and we want to reach anywhere to anywhere in 100 kilometers north south or 65 kilometers east west within an hour.
When we try to make the city more efficient, and we also want to see that the GDP per capita actually doubles in the next five years and we become a $300 economy, we need to access global finance.
I World Economic Forum, we met partners and I'm very happy to say that because of the state government stability, interventions, policies, and the MMRDS leadership taking the role in attracting global finance, about 300 billion amount of foreign debt investment is committed for developing Mumbai metropolitan region along with and we talk about infrastructure, land development, water supply projects, sewage projects, logistics projects, all the projects with city needs and city grows are possible.
Two basic things and two takeaways is project structuring has to be hand in hand with the private sector.
You need to understand what are the needs of private sector, where are the pain and where are the gain and you have to structure because when the private sector puts the money, it's internal rate of return for him, it's the risk perception for him, and we cannot put 100% risk in his favor and expect that he gets an internal rate of return and see.
Whenever a project financing or project structuring is done at a project level, and when you said, Madam about the fragmented approach having at a systemic level, we would also say that we need a vision We need compartments of what is to be achieved in phases and we need projects.
We need financial closures at a region level, at a compartment level, at a phase level, departmental level, and at a project level.
If we do that, then I think it's possible to achieve sustainable financing and achieve sustainable development goals at a regional level.
And once we do at regional level, I think the colleagues will they see that 30% of India is now living in cities, will be soon closing the 40 50% and there's global scenarios.
We are going to shift more into cities, more into service sector and city infrastructure demands.
My colleague also talked about on this about there's a huge gap between what is required and what can be provided, and there's very little what can be actually funded only through government budget.
So we need to tackle and approach private financing.
And when we approach private financing, both for infrastructure, for city development or for any of the projects, we have to see what are their priorities? What are their pain areas and we have to see that if you give good amount of certainty of policy and certainty of payback period and a project is well conceived, we have a good computation as a transparent way of completing a project and awarding a project.
I think MRD model has been successful up until now, and there's a good template actually for global south to follow that sustainable development goals can be achieved through sustainable financing by local government they need to have some capacity building, some hand holding to start with, but the land is an asset, which we need to leverage within metropolitan area to generate finance because if private sector can generate finance because of the infrastructure by the government, we can come together to ensure that the private sector and government sector and multiple multilateral funding with the good practices followed across the world can actually complete this goal of achieving sustainable development goals at a regional level.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Many things you raised, but also the complexity, but the availability of the financing, where you mentioned good projects, competitive ones, but also multi level connection and multi stakeholder, which is something that the working group and the coalition are promoting.
This approach of systemic transformation with everyone and at every level.
And of course, including private sector in financing institutions, et cetera.
Thank you very much for your inputs and let me now but apart from recognizing the great notes that we have received so far that after listening and we have to listen to the government actors themselves, we also need to frame the needs and conversations that the United Nations can have with in connecting with these governments we serve.
So I would like now to pause to hear a my colleagues from the United Nations agencies here and the panels.
Before, I also encourage you to have a look at the production of the working group recommendations, and also the coalition general recommendations for the process Tobacco report.
We have some copies if you're interested and the policy brief which is summarizing the recommendations for Baku produced and agreed by the 14 un entities are part of the coalition.
With this, I think it's a good frame for my colleagues to step in.
I would like now to invite Salon il National Climate Action lead at UNEP.
Also, we have some guiding questions for you.
Uh, which prefer more on the expertise, uh, the tools and the final channels finance channels that working group two is bringing to local finance forum.
And that local governments cannot probably easily access through bilateral engagement.
That's one of the points.
The other one is about, if you can share, how thus UNEP climate and environmental finance mandate connect to the financing gaps that the local governments have identified and what would be a concrete, if possible, UNEP contribution to a local financing strategy look like.
Thank you.
Thank you, Inigo.
For those of you in the room who do not know the UN Environment Program, I am amongst colleagues within the UN.
I just wanted to explain a little bit what we do as an institution.
UNP is tasked to shape the global environmental agenda.
Which might beg the question, what are we doing in a finance discussion? I wanted to put that there because what UNP does very much is pointing around the gaps we do it very well.
We track the good news and the bad news quite well around what are the gaps in financing for the environment? Through the working group two and other fora, we work very closely with our um UN colleagues with MDBs to make sure that financing for subnational governments is accelerated.
Just to give you a few of the points, UNF State of Finance for Nature report in 2026 found that in 2023 and financing for nature was about 220 billion, that's great news.
However, finance that directly harm nature reached about 7.3 trillion.
It states that nature based solutions investment must rise to 571 billion by 2030 to meet global commitments under the Rio Convention.
This is relevant because urban climate action must increasingly connect mitigation, adaptation, biodiversity, and finance reform.
And I like to put that number up front in many discussions around finance just to give a big picture of the challenge that is up ahead and why the UN as a system is coming together to really tackle this question of how do we finance subnational governments who are the frontliners of all of these consequences of the lack of finance? UNP focuses.
What we do as the UN Environment Program, we work with our colleagues across the UN system and through the working group too, to look at data to finance nature, improving the data because how can we solve the problem if we're not able to understand it more fully.
Um, Through our methodologies and tools, UNEP enables cities to adopt standardized NBS approaches, not necessarily tools that are developed by ourselves, but we really promote tools that are developed by our partners as well.
Look at return on investment, avoided losses.
We work very closely with Mumbai on this and the extreme heat agenda, the co benefits to health, land value, resilience to the broader development agenda that is the purview of our colleagues in UNDP and UN Habitat.
UNPs work shows that urban nature based solutions can deliver measurable economic returns while reducing climate risks.
Likewise, we've also partnered with other non UN entities through a program called Urban Shift, where we worked on finance academies with 50 cities, um, with over 100 cities globally.
We've been working on the B cool program in India, which was presented by Mr.
Shankar.
UNEP directly works with cities and regional governments to upstream pipeline development.
Working on innovative finance, mechanisms such as together with UNDP and ILFF deliver climate finance to cities and regions of scale.
So In truth, this is something that we would like to co create and to learn with our colleagues in UNDP because this is something quite new and exciting.
We believe that this is the key where instead of creating pipelines, instead of creating things that could disappear, strengthening a framework that could serve as a template across the world is something that we are very excited to work on.
Um, so upcoming milestones in the global agenda to keep advocating for local finance networks.
So we are working very closely on a few actions around key countries, Nigeria.
We are working together in Local 2030 to look at a full pipeline to finance approach for buildings and extreme heat solutions.
We have our beat the heat program, which we work on with many other UN agencies including UN DRR, who is not in this room.
It's already looking at extreme heat supported by 230 cities and 100 partners.
We have, of course, our BC India program, which has mobilized $1.5 billion in the national disaster mitigation Fund to finance cooling and resilience investment.
There's a lot of movement, but It's a drop in the bucket.
So as the UN Environment Program, as I said, we see the gaps.
We see that there's a huge gap in the environment space.
As we look at our emissions gap report, our adaptation gap report, we can only see this gap getting bigger.
We look to our partner agencies, to our colleagues within the UN system and outside to figure it out.
How do we solve this issue? We don't have the solutions as UNP, but we are very much engaged and we would like to support collective efforts towards this goal.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
It's very interesting as you started with the UN collective approach and it's very much needed and also giving us example also of non UN and even non governmental actors connecting with the conversation we had about a multi level multi stakeholder and of course, the relevance of increasing frameworks, where we all meet and we all push for the agenda.
And I You said we don't have the solutions, it's true, but we are on the way of also having a look at what the solutions are, and that's the road tours and the boot camps and that are being organized.
Thank you very much.
Let me move to the next speaker.
Mr.
Zubkats Gupta, who is the Chief of Planning and Finance section that you inhabited in our host for this World Urban Forum.
We also have for him some guiding questions on what makes local finance forums marketplace rather than a meeting and how do agencies ensure The contributions are complimentary and not duplicative.
Also, you inhabited expertise and extended expertise in northern planning, housing finance, esatial investments, make financing strategies more actionable for city and regional companies.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, good evening.
I'll just try and answer the questions in a different sequence though anyway.
It means it's such a pleasure to be part of this joint UN effort led by local 2030 coalition.
It's getting us all together to think about how we take this forward.
The civilian outcome document has given the whole Philip to the whole momentum.
Um, I mean, however, the sector still is plagued by a whole set of contradictions that we need to recognize to incorporate as we move forward.
For example, OECD yesterday said that there are 800 billion in local finance that hasn't, you know, we still have to find it somewhere.
23% of ODA went down last year in one year.
The global ODA went down.
H, on the other side, half the world's wealth is in cities, in housing and infrastructure.
However, 3 billion are still with inadequate housing.
In our cities, Mr.
Shankar mentioned about the great the amount of resources available in the metropolitan of Bombay.
However, the municipality is weak, doesn't have enough to serve quality services across the city.
There's a whole bunch of mismatches that we need to figure out and doing it bottom up is what the world is telling us because nation states and the global phenomenon of international finance is going through a difficult phase.
So within this context, UN habitat is the agency that is mandated to work on SDG 11 on the new urban agenda this year, particularly is very important to us as we rethink the new urban agenda and the whole set of tools that UN habitat has created on financing as well as planning at the local level is being thought through and regenerated in a sense within this new context.
And of course, our new strategic plan also informs it.
One of the main way forwards that we are looking at is looking at integrating or blending planning and finance and local institutions.
What are the benefits around that? What are the capacities that in the local area can give a big filip to financing? Because just looking at it as a huge problem globally almost makes it unsolvable.
But if you look at are territory by territory, region by region.
There are so many ways people are pulling this off.
So within that, so UN habitats tools, I've gone through quickly.
I'll come back to what we are planning as a coalition and in working group two.
You know, as both miss Pickup mentioned and Jodi will get into more detail, the national financial frameworks have given a good platform for within country, as well as a framework to work across countries.
At the local finance level too, that is required.
And there is a big debate at this current stage, even in the multilateral financing, but also in the public financing sector around whether you want to do many projects and go project by project or whether you want to do city improvement through programmatic approaches.
And there is, you know, while project by project seems to allow for quick wins in the medium term, they may not be so quick.
While we develop good projects on the ground, we also need to look at building capacity, both financial as well as human, as well as capability in the cities to get institutions to work together so that the resources, not the volume of resources, but the quality and the applicability of resources becomes the real challenge.
Thank you, Ego.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Ato for that and also for a reinforcing highlighting the issue of the bottom up and the existing solutions that you mentioned and connecting them with global discussions and debates on SDG 11 on the New Urban Agenda, because that's a little bit of the mission.
The core of the mission of the coalition is to connect that and make sure that the capacities, the solutions, the priorities at the local level are really different in nature than those that sometimes are national and global.
They need to be connected, but they are different and the tools therefore also guess on the tools, we'll have more information on the next speaker.
Let me introduce the next speaker, Yordy bat.
He's a senior advice to the administrator of the UNDP and the Strategic Alliances.
Also for you, Yordy, we have a couple of questions on how the agency, how UNDP is leading the localization of INFF processes through the ILFF approach.
If you can talk a little bit more on that.
So, and how local finance forums address financing gaps more effectively than maybe fragmented bilateral support.
That's one thing, and, and the other one, it will be very interesting to know how does UNDP engagement with the built platform of action, which is a powerful tool and the JoinSD Fund build financial architectures that make territories structurally investable.
So if you can just address these two issues on local finance forums and also the civil platform of action for us, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ngo, and thank you colleagues for the insights that you provided at this table.
I'm going to take it from where Spa left it.
Definitely, and Francine also mentioned these local finance forums and they sit in a particular architecture that is not the best architecture that we have so far.
One of the issues that we're discussing the diversity of projects, the fragmentation across the system, the diversity of offers.
It's not making the best bang for the buck, at a moment where really resources are meager on the multilateral system side and we need to really make all concerted efforts to pull efforts together and more than tools in Ego.
This is about structured processes, really, where the expertise from across the system but also harvesting the expertise at the national and the local level gets put on the table and integrated.
Again, on this role of integrating the different offers, the different systems, the different tools that we have available, UNDP is key and it's been defined as the integrator in the United Nations development system.
Again, the whole conversation about moving from project to project to a portfolio approach, it is something that has been discussed for years, but on the local space, this has not really geled.
One of the issues that we had in mind when approaching the intergovernmentally agreed process of the integrated national financing framework.
This is not an intergovernmentally agreed new process.
I mean, this was agreed in Adis Ababa already and understated and underscored is important in Civilia the financing for the Development Conference.
We looked at that process and said, Listen, we need to localize I mean, where the INFF the integrated national financing frameworks are mature enough at the national level, maybe this can be then brought to one level below at the sub national level and ideally at the local level without having it's not an either or.
I think they both need to be a concerted effort.
The local finance forums are not conferences.
The local finance forums are structured processes, two to three days that take local governments from financing landscape diagnosis to a portfolio of bankable proposals with the right actors in the room to move from conversations to real commitments and real action on the ground.
The design principle is deliberate.
It's one table, shared pipeline, and coordinated offers from across the UN system and the development finance actors at the local level.
UNDP, UNEP, UN Habitat, and UNICEF do not arrive with separate agendas into one particular country, sub national level, administrative level, or city or municipality, but we arrive with a shared read of the territory's financing gaps and a coordinated offer to address those.
I think this is important because um, we need to move from a fragmented landscape of diversity of actors.
I always joke about the Swiss knife type of dynamic into a kind of a more harvesting together with all the tools that we have at our disposal type of dynamic.
We did not choose where to pilot these forums by intuition.
I mean, UNDP through the local 2030 working group two, conducted systematic country assessments across 20 countries, looking at the INFF maturity, as I was saying before, the subnational governments the multi level coordination capacity and political readiness for the local finance reform.
Then this assessment gave us a transparent evidence based pipeline where we could potentially start implementing those local finance forums.
I'm not going to break the list to you yet because it still needs to be finalized, but in 2026, 2027, we are aiming at starting piloting these local financing forums in five to six countries in different regions of the world.
Ideally, the countries where the local forums will be hosted Then will also be simultaneously advanced proposals from the SDG joint fund and the Bilbao outcome, which again, in order to be coherent, the coalition would enable us all together to work in one front.
What we heard this panel today with the full spectrum that this model must work across a small island state, a federal province of 110 million, a global city, a fast growing metropolitan region, but the different starting conditions, the different gaps, but the shared underlying challenge, making development finance work, the level where it actually reaches people, and this is at the local level.
We are listening to the successes and to the shortfalls and UNDP's commitment alongside with our coalition partners in the coalition and beyond across the system and beyond the UN system is to keep showing up as one coherent offer built around what territories actually need and this was mentioned as well by Francine.
On the question, and as a good Spaniard, I'm going to be over time by a lot, but I just wanted to make sure that I address the second question because I think it's important.
How does UNDP engagement with the SA platform of action and the Joint SDG Fund builds financing architecture.
Again, the structural investable is a notion that needs to be defined a territory is structurally investable, not when it has a good project and you mentioned this, but when it has the government architecture, the fiscal coherence, and the institutional track record that makes investors willing to commit capital on a recurring basis, not a one off.
They have to come back.
This is the threshold where the integrated local financing frameworks are designed to reach.
When connecting this to the civilia platform of action, UNDP engages at this point with nine proposals in Costa Rica, in Cordiva, in Guatemala, Mauritania, South Africa, and Thailand.
These are not funding applications.
These are operational expressions of the integrated national financing framework localization logic.
Built around fiscal policy coherence, multi level government architecture, and bankable projects that connect directly to the SPH 40 ILFF aspirational goal.
We need to deliver 40 integrated local financing frameworks by 2030.
This is what it means to translate a compromise with civilian into concrete action, converting territorial priorities into structured investable pipelines.
Um, let me close just with one commitment.
The Compromisso de Sevilla gave us the political momentum.
The integrated local financing framework gave us the operational tools.
The Bilbao blueprint gave us the pipeline model, and the local finance forums gave us the marketplace.
What we need to now and what this panel can contribute is the evidence across more context of what works at scale.
UNDP commitment is to bring that evidence, feed country level lessons into global policy processes and show up alongside with our UN partners as one coherent offer.
We are not here to report intentions, we are here to report delivery and to be held accountable for it.
I thank you.
Thank you very much, vi.
Absolutely essential that concept that you always use, but it's very useful to understand what's behind the Swiss knife element for connecting that versus that fragmentation, for connecting things in the structure processes with the key role that UNDP is playing there, as well as all the colleagues from the coalition, you Have of course, and UNP diagnosis but also not stopping.
But reaching to the bankability of the elements to mention it before, but as you said, with key commitments, actions on the ground, touchable things.
Then this is clearly connected and let me grab it from there for a conclusion with the SBA with the C platform of action, and it has to be that way.
It has to be in a way uh, we connect everything and thank you for and thanks to yourself, because you're all of you are part of the coalition to recognizing that the Local 2030 coalition is that space, is that a space where this is happening, where SPA with the boot camp, as part of the practical implementation, you said momentum tools.
Marketplace, also, Francine mentioned it before in her speech a it's coming together and becomes coherent.
And this is connected with UNAD and what is expected from the UN as one, efficiency, but also the coherence of a single voice that really shares the final mission.
So let me finish because we are unfortunately running out of time.
I would like to have the privilege of extending it, but I cannot have 1 million questions for all the panelists have been fantastic.
But I think we can agree on some elements.
No single actor can solve the local financing challenge that we alone.
It requires aligned, multi level and multi stakeholder action.
That's at the very core at the very DNA of the coalition that we all form.
The second we've heard a many relevant points on coherence across initiatives and the need of the UN system to be more integrated.
Looking ahead to the coming years, this will be decesive in how we deal with the current challenges and not just for the next years, but maybe for the next decades.
This can really make a difference.
Now the priority, and I finished with this is quite clear.
It's scaling what works.
Again, let me do the marketing part of the products that we all together produce.
The policy recommendations that are coming from the UN family, but also the roll tools, solutions that are coming from the ground, existing solutions, some of them scalable, some others more tailored to the territory, but all of them shareable anyways and to be adopted.
We need to scale again up what works through strong partnerships.
There is no alternative to that, to finally pipeline bankable products, of course, as is the case of the boot camp and hopefully of many other mechanisms, the finance forums and others.
I But closing.
This must start, as we said, with the road duce with listening to the local governments, but also to the private sector, to the civil society, youth, international financing institutions, all that are essentially part of the coalition, but also the civil platform of action and other key elements because it's, again, a multi stakeholder, multi level effort.
So I My sincere thanks to the members of the working group, but also to the members of the panel for their leadership, but for your examples, which have been putting a lot of light on something we all share about assist solutions and to all partners that are sharing our experiences and insights today.
Thank you very much for all of you.
Thank you.