Five things we learned about development finance while building Aid Atlas

The document highlights significant gaps in development finance, noting that general environment protection receives only 2% of total disbursements. It examines how the European refugee crisis impacted donor budgets, the difficulty of tracking finance for specific agendas like sustainable oceans, and the lack of data disaggregation by some donors. Additionally, it identifies a notably lower disbursement ratio for climate finance compared to general development aid, suggesting systemic implementation challenges.

• Funding for general environment protection is disproportionately low compared to the scale of the global environmental crisis. Between 2013 and 2017, disbursements for this category totaled approximately USD$ 28 billion, representing about 2% of total development finance disbursements. This amount is roughly 50% less than what donors spent on their own administrative costs during the same period.
• The refugee crisis in Europe created significant financial burdens for certain large donors, though the impact on other aid varied by country. Germany and Sweden increased their total development finance to accommodate refugee costs as additional funding. In contrast, the US saw an increase in spending on refugees while its total development aid remained flat, resulting in spending declines in other sectors.
• Current OECD CRS data structures make it nearly impossible to accurately assess finance for specific global agendas, such as sustainable oceans or 'zero hunger'. Because relevant activities are spread across multiple unrelated sector and purpose codes, there is no systematic way to isolate these flows without manually scrutinizing individual project transactions.
• Data opacity is exacerbated by donors who fail to disaggregate financial reporting to specific recipients, sectors, or policy objectives. For example, Germany reported roughly one-third of its 2013–17 development finance as targeting 'Developing countries, unspecified'. Additionally, the 'Unallocated/unspecified' sector category received approximately US$ 66 billion in disbursements during this period.
• Climate finance suffers from significantly lower disbursement ratios than general development finance, indicating that approved funds are not being paid out as effectively. While the global average disbursement ratio for development aid is 86%, it is only 61% for climate mitigation and 62% for climate adaptation. This trend persists across major donors and multilateral funds, such as the Green Climate Fund and the Global Environment Facility, suggesting unique implementation or complexity problems associated with climate projects.

APA

Atteridge, A., & Savvidou, G. (2020). Five things we learned about development finance while building Aid Atlas. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/sei-pb-200602-aid-atlas-atteridge.pdf

Chicago

Atteridge, Aaron, and Georgia Savvidou. Five things we learned about development finance while building Aid Atlas. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2020. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/sei-pb-200602-aid-atlas-atteridge.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Atteridge |first1=Aaron |last2=Savvidou |first2=Georgia |title=Five things we learned about development finance while building Aid Atlas |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=June 2020 |url=https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/sei-pb-200602-aid-atlas-atteridge.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{atteridge2020five, author = {Atteridge, Aaron and Savvidou, Georgia}, title = {{Five things we learned about development finance while building Aid Atlas}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2020}, month = jun, url = {https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/sei-pb-200602-aid-atlas-atteridge.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }