Empowering Cities to Implement the 2030 Agenda and New Urban Agenda: Mobilising Finance for Sustainable Infrastructure in Asia Pacific

The international community has adopted two bold agendas to address urbanization: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the New Urban Agenda (NUA). A major challenge of these agendas, however, is lack of long-term, scalable finance to support local implementation, where it is estimated that meeting the infrastructure needs of Asia and the Pacific alone will require annual investments of around $1.7 trillion from 2016 to 2030 or $26 trillion in total.

This lack of municipal finance stands in contrast to the increasing responsibilities and demands that local governments are expected to meet. Achieving the 2030 Agenda and the NUA requires local governments to ensure that every citizen has access to services and that their provision is safe, affordable and sustainable paying particular attention to the needs of vulnerable groups. Hence, local governments need to receive access to diverse sources of finance and be enabled to make long-term investments in sustainable urban development. However, many cities around the world are constrained in their ability to retain local revenue sources, take on debt and engage in public-private partnerships (PPPs).

This networking event will present the findings of new research commissioned by UNESCAP which provides an analytical basis for dialogue with city and national governments to leverage their resources through longer tenor debt and equity financing of urban infrastructure. The research draws on experience from developed and developing countries in raising private debt and equity for financing urban infrastructure and identifies appropriate policy actions in the Asia-Pacific region.

The event will have the format of an interactive discussion among multilateral finance institutions, the private sector, national and local government decision-makers and prominent stakeholders from Asia and the Pacific with a focus on showcasing municipal financing policy options for developing countries.