As delivered.

Thank you very much Ambassador Dibba and also thank you very much Ambassador Hovhannisyan.

Excellencies, distinguished delegates, I would like to start by thanking the Second Committee and ECOSOC for providing this opportunity for UNDP to discuss this important topic with our partners. I would also like to thank the Secretariat of the Second Committee and DESA for facilitating this.

We are meeting at a critical time. Despite unprecedented global wealth, the resources available for sustainable development, unfortunately, are shrinking - and as a result, our collective ability to respond to today’s challenges are also reducing.

Across the international development landscape, our efforts tend to remain fragmented - and finance itself is often misaligned with our core objectives. We are, in many ways, trapped in so-called “mega silos”: institutional, sectoral, and financial.

While ODA resources are dwindling, the deeper problem is that what does exist is scattered and is not reaching the right places at the right time. Governments, investors, and development actors often operate in parallel; financing stays confined within single sectors; and different types of capital rarely connect to compound their effects.

The fragmentation prevents resources from flowing toward the systemic transformations needed for sustainability of transitions - limiting their potential to create jobs, attract investment, and expand opportunities for people and businesses.

Systems change or systems finance is about changing that - creating new ways that connect and sequence capital so that every dollar works together, not in isolation, and working together, to accelerate the results governments are striving to achieve.

The experiences you will hear today from Zambia and Catalonia, Spain, demonstrate early results to design new ways of reframing complex challenges into investable opportunities.

At UNDP, our role is to help countries connect the dots: linking planning, financing, and governance to formulate, finance, and implement integrated approaches to sustainable development.

This approach is paying dividends. UNDP’s current Strategic Plan set a goal to mobilize $1 trillion for the SDGs - a target we are on track to achieve. 

The 2026-2029 new Strategic Plan builds on this momentum by prioritizing systems and portfolio approaches that help governments, investors, and communities align capital to their development priorities and accelerate just transitions.

We pursue this integrator function through three pillars:

1. First, working with governments to mobilize the whole-of-society for dynamic planning, by harnessing intelligence and assets across society to continuously sense, learn, and adapt;
2. Second, supporting governments to forge coalitions for structural change by bringing together public, private, and civic actors in new governance arrangements that make long-term transformation politically and socially feasible;
3. And finally, the focus of today’s discussion, we are working with governments and other stakeholders to synergistically align investments from all sources of finance for transformation, or what we call systems finance.

This means moving beyond single assets or short-term interventions, and aligning all sources of financing - public, private, concessional, and philanthropic capital - around solutions to root causes.

Unlike traditional models of impact investing and project-based finance, which focus on individual transactions or isolated outcomes, systems finance aims to align diverse forms of capital around shared transformative goals. 

Globally, UNDP is helping countries build the foundations for systemic investing - supporting Integrated National Financing Frameworks in 86 countries and, between 2022 and 2024, already catalyzing over $870 billion for the SDGs, with every $1 invested in UNDP leveraging $60 more. 

Together with the private sector, we are embedding sustainability in business and investment through SDG Investor Maps and the ISO Impact Management Standards.

Distinguished Delegates, 

To deliver on the SDGs, we must move from funding projects to financing systems. 

This means tackling underlying drivers, not just the symptoms, and forging new public investor partnerships capable of aligning capital to development goals at scale.

We invite Member States to join us in this effort of experimentation and exploration.

Thank you.