The Indo-Pacific region, which encompasses almost 40 countries and two-thirds of the world’s population, is also the location of contestation between global powers and differing approaches to economic development and cooperation. Yet, the dominance of a security-based narrative in visions of the region has raised questions about how effectively the nations of the region can cooperate to deal with sustainable development challenges. The sustainability challenge is as defining a common element in the Indo-Pacific as are security questions.

In fact, sustainability and security have become intertwined in the Indo-Pacific. The sustainable development component of the region is at the heart of its geoeconomic challenges and strategies focused on this region, including from India, France, and the European Union. The intertwined and mutually reinforcing nature of the sustainability and security agendas in the Indo-Pacific highlight the importance of promoting sustainable, resilient, and inclusive components of the regional architecture.

The pandemic has made it imperative that alternative and additional modes of financing development be found, and cooperative mechanisms to address shared problems be devised. There is also a fresh understanding, post-pandemic, of how the shared burdens of the global commons affect the development and security constraints of each individual nation. It has also been freshly understood during the pandemic that public development finance is irreplaceable, in that it alone can play a counter-cyclical role at times of crisis.

At a policy level, like-minded nations together have an opportunity to devise a coherent development agenda that fits within the broader geoeconomic matrix. This policy direction can then be implemented in part through collaboration between public development banks and development finance institutions. This Report examines the roles that public development finance is playing in the region; the shared themes in institutional interventions; and possibilities for alignment of their mandates, actions, principles, and norms.  Alongside a sustainable finance-focused Conference in Paris in 2022, it creates a basis for discussion on how an open and inclusive multilateralism among like-minded countries can transform the development finance architecture of the Indo-Pacific.

Read the report here

• Economic Diplomacy
• Economic Reforms
• Developing and Emerging Economies
• Sustainable Development
• India
• The Pacific
• East and Southeast Asia

The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.

PREV NEXT