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Financing Development for a Beyond 2030 Agenda

Bodo Ellmers

A new global development agenda needs new financing. This paper presents policy options to strengthen fiscal space, reform taxation, and better fund global public goods.

The 2030 Agenda has failed because its goals and means have been at odds from the start. Severe underfunding of public goods and shrinking fiscal space caused by costly borrowing indicate that a Beyond 2030 Agenda requires a fundamentally different financial architecture - one that prioritizes public over private financing. This paper presents key policy initiatives, such as corporate tax reform and the introduction of wealth taxes, which can make national tax systems more effective and redistributive. It also addresses fiscal transfers between countries, through increased and improved official development assistance modeled on regional and national approaches, and innovative initiatives such as Global Public Investment. The paper also examines the value of Special Drawing Rights in crisis response. To conclude, it presents initial ideas on how the Beyond 2030 process can integrate goals and means more coherently.

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Financing development for a beyond 2030 agenda

Financing development for a beyond 2030 agenda

Ellmers, Bodo | Bonn : Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung e.V., July 2026

The Road-to-2030 series calls on leading experts across multiple fields to address the question, “How should we approach a global development agenda beyond 2030?” With papers on financing, economic principles, state capacity, gender justice, workers’ perspectives, peace and security, and other critical domains, the series ex­plores the key questions and challenges to create an ef­fective multilateral framework for global development.

For more information, visit https://ny.fes.de/topics/2030-agenda.html

About the Author

Bodo Ellmers is Managing Director and also Director of the Financing for Development program at the Global Policy Forum Europe. He has authored numerous influential research reports and articles on development finance, and leads GPF Europe´s advocacy in this area. Before joining GPF Europe, Bodo worked for the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad) in Brussels, most recently as Head of Policy. He was active in UNCTAD expert groups and a member of the OECD Working Party on Aid Effectiveness, coordinated the advocacy of European civil society organizations at the IMF and advised the UN General Assembly on debt crisis resolution. In previous positions, he was policy advisor for the Global Call to Action against Poverty during the influential campaign at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm and the second UN Conference on Financing for Development in Doha. He studied economics and political science at Freie Universität Berlin.