Across the Arab States region people are feeling many pressures—rising costs, daily struggles to find decent jobs and disruptive climate extremes. But while challenges are multiplying, so are solutions. And the capital needed to ease these pressures is available in the region. While the financing needs in the region to meet climate commitments is $600 billion by 2030, the region has over $4.5 trillion in banking assets and trillions more with institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds. What is missing are systems that can move available capital to the people and places that need it most. This is the central challenge we must address.

Demands are real and urgent. Solutions are available. What’s missing are the pathways and implementation mechanisms to turn capital into progress. That’s where the Green Financing Platform (GFP) comes in. It is not a fund nor a new institution. GFP is a catalytic mechanism – built to connect financing strategies to capital to impact. It is intended to help governments clear bottlenecks, expand fiscal space, build green financial systems, and unlock real investments in lives and livelihoods.

As we approach the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), the choice is clear. We must unleash the power of finance to generate transformational change for communities, climate action, and sustainable livelihoods.

Expanding fiscal Space without expanding debt

Public debt in the region has hit $1.4 trillion. For many countries debt has turned from a bridge to progress, to a wall stifling it. Continued reliance on debt alone leads to dead ends.

The GFP will support governments to attract private capital through smarter tools: green bonds, carbon pricing, debt-for-nature swaps and targeted tax incentives. Anchored in national strategies like Integrated National Financing Frameworks, these tools help turn policy into investment. The goal is not just more money, but smarter, faster and more impactful financing.

Building financial systems that sustain capital flows

At times, even when money is available, it may not always flow to where it matters. Today, only 7 Arab countries have sustainable finance strategies. Many lack the regulatory clarity and institutional backbone needed to attract investment. To anchor its work in evidence-based insights that guide systemic reform, the GFP prioritizes analyzing financial landscapes across three critical pillars, namely, enabling policies and regulations; financial instruments and providers; and institutions and market actors.

Grounded in a belief that foundations of progress are systems not one-off deals, the GFP will strengthen institutions — from development banks to SME guarantee facilities — so that capital can flow seamlessly. With development partners, it will help countries build necessary institutions and financial instruments and equip them. It will not compete with banks but will help them lead.

Turning talk into transactions

Green finance doesn’t belong in concept notes. It belongs on the ground. The GFP will enable real deals — bankable, de-risked investments - in solar energy, water resilience, and climate smart agriculture. The returns are real. For example, every US$1 million invested in renewables creates 3 times more jobs than fossil fuels. In a region facing record youth unemployment, this is about climate solutions and livelihoods.

Yet the region lags far behind. the Arab region has accounted for just 83 blended finance transactions to date, mobilizing $14.2 billion, which is less than 1% of the global blended finance market of over $200 billion across 1,061 transactions. Other developing regions attract 8–9 times more blended finance.

Our goal is to enable green finance in the Arab region to be fully market-driven by 2030 — not reliant on external actors and powered by systems built to last.

Investing with purpose

FfD4 is not just a conference. It is a crossroads. It calls on us to choose today our direction to the future. Finance can remain what it has often been—rigid, cautious, slow and distant from those it should serve, or it can become what it ought to be— a bridge connecting capital to community, opportunity to need, and growth to shared purpose.

Through the GFP, countries can scale what works to move resources to resilience: green bonds, Islamic and conventional green finance, SME support, and de-risking tools. These aren’t buzzwords, they’re blueprints.

The capital is available, solutions are accessible, and the urgency is clear. Our collective challenge is to scale up action and accelerate the transformation of systems to meet the demands of the moment.

What we invest in today will define tomorrow for our children. We cannot squander the opportunity to shape a greener, more inclusive future.

This blog was originally published in AAWSAT