Smart ways to mobilize more efficient and effective long-term investment in city regions

The Ecological Sequestration Trust convened a high-level meeting from 24 to 28 February, 2015, in the Bellagio Centre of The Rockefeller Foundation, on how to finance improved planetary health and the delivery of the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals.

The meeting gathered leading practitioners, including UCLG Committee on Local Finance for Development, with the aim to producing this report with new insights into tackling the challenge of how to rapidly scale up SDG delivery globally.

The report contains practical examples from China, Ghana, Brazil, Mongolia and the UK that have been scaled up in those countries and have become sources of inspirations in other regions around the world. Each case was discussed during the meeting by experts together with local representatives. The final report also contains thematic analysis dedicate to, among others: “How can city-regions create bankable investments?”, “Risk assessment and resilience” & “The role of science and data and systems modelling”.

The key recommendations from the analysis are: 

1. The battle to deliver Post-2015 SDGs globally will be won or lost in cities
2. City regions need an adequate share of government funds to enable them to attract the necessary private capital
3. The availability of finance is not an issue
4. The main barrier is the lack of capacity and tools to bring forward ‘bankable’ projects
5. Transfers of knowledge, best practices and human and ecological resource data are needed at different scales - from local communities and regions, different cities, entire nations and on up to global scale. 
6. One of the best way to connect to funding sources is to set up an Urban Development Fund (UDF) financing vehicle, supported by a systems platform
7. Local data and systems modelling are needed in the platform. Open-source tools, which enable the use of local open-data in systems models are now being developed for this purpose.
8. Projects are best taken forward using the Public Private Partnership (PPP) aggregator model in which the platform is used to support planning, design, delivery and ongoing maintenance.
9. Projects need to integrate human and ecological systems to reduce the cost of mitigation and adaptation and to support human well-being.
10. Local capacity for planning, modelling and project development needs to be developed urgently in city regions.
11. Overseas Development Aid (ODA) funding can be specifically targeted at capacity building and the provision of the necessary tools for city regions.
12. New financial instruments and mechanisms are needed both within and outside the formal banking sector to enable financing and development to be inclusive and to reach down to the needs of the community.
13. The (re)insurance sector has a key role to play in risk assessment in developing countries and enabling risks to be better accounted for in the wider financial system.