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The development co-operation community needs to innovate to meet the global challenges ahead. Although it has an established track record for innovating partnerships, funding instruments and technologies, they are not enough to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals. This report synthesises the lessons emerging from an OECD Development Assistance Committee peer learning exercise on how innovation efforts can be strengthened, individually and collectively, to achieve the 2030 Agenda. The report is organised around three blocks – strategy, management and culture; organisation and collaboration; and, the innovation process – and provides recommendations on how innovation can best benefit poor and vulnerable people around the world.

The OECD’s Development Co-operation Profiles compile and analyse verified statistics and trends on how development assistance is allocated geographically, to sectors, multilateral and civil society organisations, cross-cutting priorities such as gender equality and women’s economic empowerment and the environment and climate, and to mobilise private finance. The profiles cover official and philanthropic providers of aid, official development assistance (ODA) and development finance. These providers include members of the OECD and its Development Assistance Committee (DAC), other countries and philanthropic foundations. The profiles also give an overview of key strategic and policy priorities for development co-operation, the institutional set-up and evaluation systems. The Development Co-operation Profiles are published annually and are a pillar of the OECD’s Development Co-operation Report . For more than 50 years, the Development Co-operation Report has brought new evidence, analysis and ideas to the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and international community more broadly, shaping policy reform, behaviour change and promoting best practices in development co-operation. Each year the report analyses a fresh policy issue that is timely, relevant or challenging for development co-operation policy and finance. The main report also includes shorter profiles of each provider that present key trends through infographics.

This report identifies the opportunities that Islamic finance presents for donors. To achieve these, Arab and OECD Development Assistance Committee donors need to mobilise innovative forms of financing and deliver the call to deepen the transformation of development finance systems. DAC members could do so by broadening and deepening exposure to alternative forms of financing, such as Islamic finance. Islamic finance represents USD 2.5 trillion – a share of which could be mobilised for development – and its tenets resonate across the member countries of the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation and beyond. Arab donors could harness Islamic finance, as a means to strengthen partnerships with DAC members, whilst increasing the effectiveness of existing aid flows in countries and contexts where they have considerable access. Doing so could create a more equitable and stable development finance order capable of delivering the SDGs and achieve greater impact in partner countries. Both communities would then be able to chart a path for all development actors, notably the private sector, development finance institutions and other bilateral donors. This report provides a set of action points for Arab and DAC donors, highlighting the benefits of engaging in and co-operating through Islamic finance.

Digital transformation is rapidly altering civic space, challenging the ways in which members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and other providers of development co-operation strive to promote an enabling environment for civil society to contribute to sustainable development. This paper aims to support DAC members and other providers of development co-operation to integrate the implications of a range of plausible futures of civic space into positive policy action today. To this end, it provides an overview of the variables (i.e. current trends, drivers of change and uncertainties) that may determine the trajectory of civic space in the context of digital transformation; identifies four plausible futures that emerge from four different logical interactions of these variables - that could materialise over a ten-year horizon and be fully realised by 2030; and draws policy implications to support DAC members and other providers in designing development cooperation policies that best leverage the opportunities that digital transformation offers while mitigating its risks.

To mobilise and align finance to the SDGs, and, most importantly, to achieve impact, both public and private actors need to implement effective impact measurement and management practices. Impact management enables investors, enterprises and other stakeholders to include positive and negative impact considerations into investment and business decisions. Impact measurement allows organisations to set impact objectives, monitor impact performance and evaluate impact. The increasing focus of investors on 'impact' has led to the development of a large number of principles, frameworks, standards, certifications, tools and indicators for impact management and measurement. The crowded nature of this space and the multiplicity and different understanding of terms and concepts makes it hard to navigate. This paper attempts to bring some clarity in this space, by proposing a two-axes mapping of the existing (i) principles, (ii) frameworks and methodologies, (iii) standards, certifications and ratings and (iv) metrics and indicators to manage and measure impact of sustainable investments targeting the SDGs. In addition, the paper applies the mapping approach to a series of existing initiatives, highlighting the complexity and range of principles, frameworks, methodologies, standards and metrics that exist to measure and manage impact and providing interesting initial insights into the level of consensus in the space of investing for sustainable development.

The OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC) conducts periodic reviews of the individual development co-operation efforts of DAC members. The policies and programmes of each DAC member are critically examined once every five to six years. DAC peer reviews assess the performance of a given member, not just that of its development co-operation agency, and examine both policy and implementation. They take an integrated, system-wide perspective on the development co-operation activities of the member under review and its approach to fragility, crisis and humanitarian assistance. Ireland is a strong voice for sustainable development. Quality partnerships with civil society, staunch support for multilateralism and good humanitarian donorship are hallmarks of its development co-operation. The vision and ambition of its 2019 international development policy, A Better World, requires Ireland to increase its official development assistance as planned, develop guidance and a new results management approach, and undertake strategic workforce planning.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is clear on the need to engage civil society organisations (CSOs) in implementing and monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals. With their capacity to bring the voices of those on the frontlines of poverty, inequality and vulnerability into development processes, CSOs can help to ensure no one is left behind. In order to work to their maximum potential, CSOs need members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) to provide and promote enabling environments. This study provides a comprehensive review of the various ways in which DAC members support and engage with civil society. It argues that they can do more to make their civil society policies and practices effective. To that end, the study provides action points for further discussion with DAC members, CSOs, and others, to be developed into a guidance or a recommendation for how members can improve the effectiveness of their work with civil society, and, by extension, make environments for CSOs more enabling.

The achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) demands unprecedented resources and efforts. Remittances as one of the largest development finance flows are an important source of income for millions of households in developing countries and offer tremendous potential to contribute towards the achievement of Agenda 2030. However, the high cost of sending remittances limits their full potential. The global average cost of sending USD 200 is 6.9% of the remittance. SDG 10 C aims to reduce the cost to less than 3% and to eliminate remittance corridors with cost higher than 5% by 2030. Blockchain technology promises to disintermediate banks, transform the financial landscape and drastically reduce the cost of cross-border transactions, yet there is a need for further evidence on this topic. The OECD Development Co-operation Directorate (DCD) has developed this paper to provide an overview of diverse perspectives on the intersection of blockchain technology and remittances by exploring the opportunities and challenges of this technology for reducing the cost of remittances. The paper identifies several limitations, such as data privacy risks, regulatory uncertainty and last-mile delivery, among others, while investigating whether blockchain technology is the solution to reduce the cost of remittances.

Countries are faced with the growing challenge of managing increasing risks from climate change and climate variability, putting development and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals at risk. The adoption in 2015 of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Paris Agreement on climate change provides a clear mandate for increased coherence in countries’ approaches to climate and disaster risk reduction. Countries increasingly recognise the benefits of improved coherence between the two policy areas, exemplified by the number of countries that either have developed joint strategies or put in place processes that facilitate co-ordination. Informed by the country approaches of Ghana, Peru and the Philippines, in addition to a review of relevant literature, this report examines the potential for increased coherence in approaches to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction across levels of government and sectors. It identifies ways in which government officials, development co-operation and other stakeholders can support efforts to further enhance coherence between the two policy areas, not only in the three case study countries, but also those in other countries as well as providers of development co-operation.