USAID’s Goldilocks dilemma. Is USAID's climate ask too big or too small?

[Gunnar Larson]

The U.S. Agency for International Development wants to spend an eye-popping
amount of money to battle climate change — but it *wants the private sector
to come up with the bulk of it*, raising the question of how realistic the
ambitious plan is.

On the flip side, “eye-popping” is in the eye of the beholder, and others
are slamming the agency for lowballing what’s needed.

Out of the $150 billion USAID wants to mobilize
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it *would only provide a few billion* of its own money, relying on external
investors for the rest.

The agency acknowledges both the magnitude of what it’s asking for — and
that whatever it does garner is just the tip of a multitrillion-dollar
iceberg.

“The point of this exercise is to *turn a little money into a lot more
money*,” says Gillian Caldwell, USAID’s chief climate officer. “It’s not a
business-as-usual scenario at USAID right now, and I don’t think we should
be expecting business-as-usual results.”

But it’s tough to change the business-as-usual mindset of a behemoth
bureaucracy, although some are impressed with the plan. “We are glad to see
that the administration is putting some money where their mouth is,” Shaun
Martin of the World Wildlife Fund says.
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