Closing the Gap Deck by Jay Collins
Applying financial solutions and technological innovation to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
By Jay Collins, Vice Chairman Corporate & Investment Banking, Citi Group.
- The Sustainable Development Goals include 17 broad based objectives and 169 specific targets
- The estimated annual cost to achieve these goals is $3.5-5 trillion, while only about $1.5 trillion has been allocated, leaving a $2-3.5 trillion funding gap
- The goals will require a paradigm shift toward doing good and doing well at the same time
- Financially, there will a requirement for an entirely new age of private public partnerships and a crowding in of the private sector
- The capital markets will be one of the drivers of SDGs’ funding success, and could become the single most meaningful component of the “billions to trillions” funding gap
- We will need to be creative in structuring funding solutions that achieve private sector return thresholds and can be applied across the SDGs, from the environment to infrastructure
- With $3.5 trillion lost a year in global GDP due to corruption, using technology as an integrity tool will be a powerful arrow in the SDG quiver
