The 1992 World Summit on Environment and Development clearly established the objective of sustainable development. A decade later, that objective remains the goal of the world community, having been most recently restated in the Millennium Development Goals and the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. Achieving this objective will require considerable resources. Official Development Assistance (ODA) will play an important role in financing sustainable development. However, ODA flows have fallen short of the commitments made in 1992. Moreover, even substantially increased ODA flows would be insufficient to meet the tremendous needs. Other sources of resources must be sought.
In 2001 and 2002, The World Bank, UNEP and the IMF worked together on a report, Financing for Sustainable Development, that served as an input to the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. It gathered best practice examples on public sector finance for environmentally sustainable development in developing countries--highlighting incentive effects and impacts on the poor where appropriate--, and provided a rough scoping of the magnitude of finances which may be generated.
The contribution of UNEP focused on private sector finance, and the contribution of the World Bank and the IMF focused on public sector finance. The World Bank/IMF background report has been published as a World Bank working paper, Generating Public Sector Resources to Finance Sustainable Development -- Revenue and Incentive Effects, and can be accessed via the link below.
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