The Brief

The Brief: The case of the missing $54 billion in development banks’ climate finance

ImpactAlpha · November 10, 2025

Greetings Agents of Impact! We are taking a Brief break for Tuesday’s Veterans Day holiday in the US. We’ll be back in your inbox Wednesday, Nov. 12. 

📞 Get PluggedIn today: Blending and braiding capital to power the future of work. Join Taj Eldridge of Jobs for the Future and ImpactAlpha’s Sherrell Dorsey to explore the use of bridge funding, blended finance and braided capital to create the good green jobs of the future. Eldridge and Dorsey will be joined by Green Power Ventures’ Reginald Parker and Edward Jean-Louis of Monte’s Fam. Get PluggedIn today, Monday, Nov. 10, at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm London. Still time to RSVP. 

☎️ Answer The Call: Catalyzing local growth funds for growth firms in Africa. Join growth fund managers from Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya who are unlocking domestic and institutional capital to finance small businesses. WIC Capital’s Evelyne Dioh Simpa, Mirepa Investment Advisors’ Samuel Yeboah, Aruwa Capital Management’s Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes, and Kenya Climate Ventures’ Victor Ndiege join the Collaborative for Frontier Finance’s Drew von Glahn, in conversation with David Bank, to discuss what’s working, what’s not, and how catalytic capital can do more. Join this special 90-minute Agents of Impact Call, this Wednesday, Nov. 12, at 6am PT / 9am ET / 3pm Lagos / 5pm Nairobi. RSVP today.

In today’s Brief:

  • Transparency and disclosure in multilateral bank climate financing
  • Boston Impact Initiative’s First Mover Fund
  • An employee ownership trust in Arkansas
  • A call for proof, not promises, at COP30

The case of the missing $54 billion in development banks’ climate financing. In Thailand, there was a $50 million debt commitment for rooftop solar. In Turkiye, a $155 million loan for public facilities’ earthquake resilience. And in Colombia and Peru, a $24.4 million equity investment in energy-efficient affordable housing. The deals were made by the World Bank and regional multilateral development banks, or MDBs, as part of their climate finance pledges. The UK-based nonprofit, Publish What You Fund, has painstakingly tallied nearly 4,700 deals by 11 multilaterals between 2021 and 2023 to foster greater transparency in the aid and development finance sectors. Then the group compared its findings to what the banks published in their joint summary report on climate finance in September. Publish What You Fund was able to identify deal information for $253 billion – $54 billion short of the $307 billion the banks said they invested in climate initiatives over that time. The missing deals are “untraceable at the project level,” representing a major lack of transparency in public and quasi-public funding streams as the COP30 climate summit gets underway in Belém, Brazil, warns Publish What You Fund’s Gary Forster. “All of these numbers are getting bigger because the climate commitments and the scale of the climate problem is getting bigger,” Forster says. “You should be able to click on a number and see what’s behind it.”

  • Implementation COP. At COP30, dubbed the “implementation COP,” pressure is on wealthy nations and development finance institutions to ratchet up climate finance commitments to lower-income and vulnerable countries. In a guest post on ImpactAlpha, the CEOs of British International Investment, FMO and Norfund say they have mobilized over $3 billion in private climate capital in the past year (country-specific development finance institutions were not part of Publish What You Fund’s latest research, though they are part of its DFI Transparency Index). The capital has flowed through organizations like Pentagreen Capital, which supports sustainable infrastructure in Southeast Asia, and projects like the Kenhardt solar and battery facility in South Africa. “If COP30 is to mark a genuine turning point,” the DFI leaders write, “DFIs and MDBs must collaborate more intentionally on pipeline creation [and work with] governments to ensure regulatory environments can sustain private participation.” In a significant first, the World Bank’s private finance group, the International Finance Corp., in September securitized $510 million in debt investments for additional lending in emerging markets. Read their guest post.
  • $600 billion more. S&P Global Ratings last month found that a reassessment of the credit risks of multilateral banks could enable an additional $600 billion to $800 billion in development lending. The credit ratings agency undertook a major revision of how it rates risk for MDBs, based in part on a new release of emerging market loan data from the secretive Global Emerging Markets, or GEMs, risk database (for background see, “GEMs loan data debunks misperceptions of risks”). GEMs, an initiative of nearly 30 MDBs and DFIs, is possibly the largest database of emerging market credit risk statistics. GEMS for the first time published recovery rates for sovereign and sovereign-guaranteed debt over the past 40 years. The average annual default rate was less than 0.8%, with a 95.1% recovery rate. If other major ratings agencies follow S&P’s lead, “the cumulative impact could be transformational for global development finance, especially at a time when fiscal pressures and climate transitions demand more affordable capital,” commented the African Union’s Misheck Mutize. Adds Forster: “Once you start to win on transparency, more people change their behavior.”
  • Keep reading, “The case of the missing $54 billion in development banks’ climate financing,” by Jessica Pothering. 

Dealflow: Catalytic Capital

Boston Impact Initiative’s First Mover Fund offers ‘first-in’ capital for impact-first fund managers. The early capital needed to start investing and attract limited partners remains in short supply for many for impact-first funds. Boston Impact Initiative is raising a $5 million fund to be the “first-in” capital for these funds, offering catalytic grants to launch operations, as well as access to its network of LPs, experienced fund managers, advisors and mentors. “We want to be that first institutional investor that could validate their fund’s model, but also catalyze other investors to come in,” BII’s Betty Francisco told ImpactAlpha. 

  • First Mover’s first. Wells Fargo Foundation is the first backer of the First Mover Fund, allocating $1.5 million in grant funding. The fund’s first investment is in the Moonsoon Fund, an Indigenous women-led fund. “Moonsoon is reimagining capital to better serve and build wealth for Indigenous entrepreneurs,” said Vanessa Roanhorse, who is launching the fund with Justine Correa. The First Mover Fund will target managers from Boston Impact Initiative’s ARC Fellowship, an eight-month accelerator for justice-driven fund managers in the US and Canada. Among 90 managers that have gone through the accelerator since 2020, more than half are women and the majority are people of color; 22 of the fund managers are currently raising capital.
  • More.

Common Trust helps Arkansas’ Cypress Valley Meat transition to an employee-owned trust. Since 2010, Cypress Valley Meat Company has provided processing services to more than 900 independent poultry and livestock farmers in Arkansas. The small chain employs about 150 workers, all of whom will now become owners and share in the company’s profits through an employee ownership trust, or EOT. “Because Cypress Valley employees work in mostly rural communities with lower wages, the ability to now share in a bigger profit pool is game changing,” said Common Trust’s Zoe Schlag. Cypress Valley is the 17th EOT that Common Trust has designed to create ownership for hundreds of thousands of workers. Common Trust in September facilitated the creation of an EOT for 135,000 caregivers with Consumer Direct Care Network (see, “In-home caregivers get a stake as bigger companies discover employee ownership trusts”).

  • Owners’ legacy. Cypress Valley’s transition to employee ownership fulfills the intended legacy of the company’s late founder Andy Shaw. During the Covid pandemic, as meat producers faced surging demand and many small processors shut down, Shaw introduced wellness bonuses to keep employees motivated. “Through my hiring process, it was apparent that Andy Shaw was looking for a way for his business to be more meaningful than a paycheck for those doing the hard work everyday,” Cypress Valley’s Brandon Dunn told ImpactAlpha. Shaw had “a philosophy of ‘I don’t want to just hire you, I want to retire with you,’” Dun added. “These early conversations put our executive team on the path of looking for ways to fulfill the vision.”
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Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

  • EDFI Management Facility is providing a guarantee to support FMO’s $99 million anchor investment in the Green Investments Partnership, a blended finance fund backing green infrastructure projects in South and Southeast Asia. (EDFI)
  • Insect farming venture NextProtein raised €18 million ($21 million) in a Series B round co-led by SWEN Capital Partners’ Blue Ocean Fund and British International Investment. (AquaFeed)
  • Kshema raised $20 million from the Green Climate Fund to provide crop insurance and agrometric advisory services to India’s smallholder farmers. (YourStory)
  • Swiss blockchain platform Cardano provided a $250,000 grant via its innovation funding platform Project Catalyst to KWARXS, which allows individuals to own fractional stakes in real-world solar projects. (SolarQuarter)

Impact Voices: COP Watch

At COP30, let’s stop counting promises and start funding proof. In rural Kenya, a smallholder farmer named Josephine nearly gave up on her dream farm after rains failed and a well dried up. A solar irrigation pump from SunCulture, financed through installments and a $100 down payment borrowed from her son, changed everything. Within two years, she had repaid the cost, expanded her crops and business, and built a home. For Tamer El-Raghy of Acumen Resilient Agriculture Fund, or ARAF, Josephine’s story is “proof that when you give farmers the right tools, they do the rest.” As climate leaders gather in Brazil for COP30, El-Raghy argues it’s time to “stop counting promises and start funding proof.” 

  • Investing in resilience. Only 5% of global climate finance goes to adaptation, and less than 5% of that comes from the private sector. That’s a “$1 trillion blind spot,” says El-Raghy. Evidence from Acumen’s portfolio shows that resilience pays. Across a dozen agribusinesses in ARAF’s portfolio, 89% of farmers report higher production and 90% report higher incomes. El-Raghy calls for a new “resilience asset class” that blends philanthropic, concessional and commercial capital to bridge the gap between charity and markets. Philanthropic capital can work like R&D funding, testing “early-stage agribusiness models that are too risky for mainstream investors.” Once a model is proven, ARAF and similar funds can step in to scale them “with patient, commercial discipline.”
  • Keep reading, “At COP30, let’s stop counting promises and start funding proof,” by Acumen Resilient Agriculture Fund’s Tamer El-Raghy.

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

💃🏽 Step up, step out – again. We’re reprising our successful SOCAP happy hour with an encore for Bay Area locals (and visitors!) with Morgan Simon and Iya Lingua. Join ImpactAlpha, Candide Group, Toniic, ImpactAssets, Echoing Green and the SF Impact Crew for jazz, soul and informal networking, Sunday, Nov. 16, from 4-8pm PT at Cigar Bar (no smoking on Sundays), 850 Montgomery St. in SF. Admission is free, but please RSVP here.  

And join ImpactAlpha at these upcoming partner events:

On this Veterans Day, we salute ImpactAlpha family member Lt. Col. Martin Bebell of the United States Marine Corps on his retirement after 20 years of honorable active duty service. His distinguished career included three deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and his final command of Marine Air Support Squadron 1 at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. Job well done, Martin, Zuleyma, Sebastian and Joaquin! Thank you to all who have served.

Impact Europe welcomes Angela Wiebeck, formerly with Aquila Capital, as CEO, succeeding Roberta Bosurgi… S2G Investments appoints Grant Leslie, previously with FGS Global, as operating partner of government and policy… Clean Energy Ventures is looking for an investment analyst… Project Drawdown is hiring a senior analyst for climate philanthropy and investing… SoLa Impact has an opening for an associate director of asset management… Pacific Community Ventures is on the hunt for a chief lending officer… The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center is recruiting a director of economic growth and partnerships in Boston.

👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.

Thank you for your impact!

– Nov. 10, 2025