“Total Official Support for Sustainable Development” (TOSSD): It is time to get South-South cooperation providers on board
©Shutterstock_1454695946
In September, the UN General Assembly’s High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development met to discuss how to fund the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – four years after the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was set. The world community already acknowledged the role of non-traditional funding, namely South-South cooperation and triangular cooperation in Busan in 2011. With the new ambitious 2030 Agenda, funding became ever more crucial. The UN estimates that the funding gap for achieving the SDGs amounts to 2.5 trillion USD every year. The 2015 Addis Ababa Action Agenda therefore called not only for increasing Official Development Assistance (ODA) but also for mobilizing other public and private resources that go beyond ODA. To build a picture of the total funds channeled for development assistance, in 2014, the OECD started developing a new international measurement framework to cover a more comprehensive range of development finance, the “Total Official Support for Sustainable Development” (TOSSD) measure. TOSSD is due to be finalized next year. Now is the time to make sure that TOSSD can fulfil its potential to provide a more complete picture of development finance from all contributors not only from the Global North but also from the Global South.…