The year 2015 is crucial for global agreements that establish the trajectories and paradigms of development. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are set to be replaced Twith the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the UN General Assembly in September and negotiations on a new global treaty on climate change will take place in Paris in December. The global climate and development processes intersect; therefore, the question of financing—how much, how and for what—should logically also intersect.

However, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda adopted at the UN Financing for Development (FFD) conference in July failed to yield concrete new proposals for additional funding that can be swiftly implemented to meet the world’s multiple challenges. Instead, the agenda once again stressed the need for countries to achieve the target of 0.7 percent of Gross National Income for Official Development Assistance (ODA) and noted with concern the failure of many countries to do so till date.

The failure of Addis means that finance has now become the proverbial elephant in the room. Just like in the classic fable on the blind people and the elephant, experts on development, climate and finance approach the elephant from their own perspectives by touching and feeling only its partial contours. None of them is able to comprehend the overall landscape of challenges and opportunities. Development experts are scared that climate finance will detract from available resources. Climate experts, meanwhile, obsess about finance going to “bad things like fossil fuels”. And finance experts worry that institutional interventions will lead to outcomes that are suboptimal from a market point of view.

This brief is an attempt to remove the blindfold and lift the veil of disciplinary ignorance.