Abstract
The temptations are all too real. Headlines come to those with creative, innovative, first-of-its-kind solutions. But successful climate finance means the opposite: boring, replicable leverage of limited public funds to channel profit-seeking investments in the right direction.
Saying this out loud feels like stating the obvious. I am not the first to recognize that charity can’t solve where the profit motive points in the opposed direction. The math couldn’t be clearer: Charitable dollars, almost by definition, can only amount to a portion of the profits earned from activities that benefit from the status quo. That goes for individual efforts as much as for multilateral development banks (MDBs) and other funds spending taxpayer dollars at home or abroad.
Throwing one’s hands in the air – writing off charity altogether – of course, is not the answer either. There is plenty of good even the most limited of donor funds can do and there is indeed a name for this search for leverage that has found its way into most any MDB conversation around climate and development: blended finance.