From Ambition to Investment: Five Priorities for Business and Finance Leaders

The 2026 SDG Investment Forum and UN Global Compact Leaders Summit agreed that capital is not the binding constraint. The harder task is making sustainable investment simpler, faster and easier to replicate.

Developing countries face a financing gap of up to US$4 trillion a year to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Yet large pools of private capital remain disconnected from the businesses, projects and communities where investment is most needed.

That paradox ran through the 2026 SDG Investment Forum and UN Global Compact Leaders Summit in New York. CFOs, investors, development finance institutions and policymakers met there to discuss how sustainability ambition becomes investment at scale. Sessions covered blended finance, emerging markets, resilience and standards, and the same diagnosis kept recurring: the capital exists, but the structures for deploying it remain fragmented, complex and poorly matched to how businesses operate.

For the CFO Coalition for the SDGs, the discussions point to five priorities.

1. Business must help design the deals

Companies are too often treated as recipients of development finance rather than its architects. But they understand their markets, supply chains and operating risks better than anyone, and that knowledge is what turns development priorities into bankable projects. Participants at the Forum argued that companies should be involved from the earliest stage, working with governments, development finance institutions and investors to identify opportunities and structure transactions.

The Coalition's Business-Led Blended Finance Playbook shows what this looks like in practice. Its examples range from renewable energy in Zimbabwe and aquifer management in Mexico to steel decarbonisation and hydrogen infrastructure. The task now is to implement the insights and models shared there across markets. 

2. Unlocking capital means managing risk

Available capital does not automatically become investment. Institutional investors need appropriate risk-adjusted returns. Regulatory uncertainty, currency volatility, thin project data and short track records continue to deter them, particularly in emerging markets.

Blended finance can close that gap by combining public, philanthropic and commercial capital and allocating risk to those best placed to bear it. One example highlighted at the Summit was KCB Group's US$96.9 million programme backed by the Green Climate Fund, which supports climate-smart technologies for small and medium-sized enterprises. But too many blended transactions remain bespoke, slow and expensive to arrange. To work at scale, these instruments must become simpler and more standardised.

3. Global capital needs local partners

Emerging markets are central to the SDGs but still attract a disproportionately small share of investment. Treating them as a single asset class makes the problem worse, because economic conditions, regulation and institutional capacity vary enormously from one country to the next.

Local banks, businesses and financial institutions are essential to identifying opportunities, preparing projects and making sure capital reaches its intended beneficiaries. Participants called for stronger country platforms that bring governments, development finance institutions, investors and companies together around national priorities. Such platforms can also tackle the problem of scale. They can pool smaller enterprises and projects into portfolios, backed by reliable data and shared risk, which makes investable what would otherwise be too small or too costly to assess.

4. Standards should enable investment, not obstruct it

Credible, comparable sustainability data is essential for directing capital. But a proliferation of frameworks and investor requirements imposes real costs, particularly on companies operating across jurisdictions and on smaller firms with limited resources.

Participants argued that standards should help companies and investors make better decisions, not simply satisfy compliance. That means balancing rigour with practicality, recognising that sectors and markets face different transition pathways, and pursuing interoperability where full global uniformity is out of reach. Examples from agricultural supply chains showed how sustainability data can help farmers raise productivity, manage climate risk and access finance, but only when the information brings real benefits to those providing it. For CFOs, the opportunity is to link sustainability performance directly to financial decision-making.

5. Measure success by investment delivered

The strongest conclusion was that the world does not lack sustainable finance initiatives. What it lacks is an effective system for converting them into real-world projects, transactions and measurable outcomes. That requires simpler processes, better project preparation and financing structures designed to be replicated rather than reinvented.

It also requires recognising that business performance and resilience are one and the same. Throughout the Summit, it was discussed in terms of growth, competitiveness and stability. Climate risk, geopolitical uncertainty and supply-chain disruption are already shaping corporate strategy and investment decisions.

From conversation to capital

The CFO Coalition for the SDGs is well placed to connect companies, investors and development finance institutions and to help businesses originate the investments the SDGs require. Building on the Playbook, our priority is to forge new partnerships, demonstrate successful transactions and replicate what works.

With 2030 approaching, progress will be judged not by commitments announced but by capital deployed and lives improved. The ambition is there and so is the capital. The task now is to connect them.

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