Introduction: matching means and ends The adoption of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable De ­velopment as a universally accepted development agen­da is generally seen as a great achievement of interna­tional cooperation and may be one of the last great vic­tories of multilateralism before tougher times began. Its broad set of goals—the broadest ever adopted by the United Nations—includes fighting poverty and hunger, boosting health and education globally, addressing cli­mate change and biodiversity loss, and promoting de­cent work and economic transition. But the Sustainable Development Goal(SDG) framework had a false start: the Agenda 2030 was underfunded from the beginning, so the means never matched the ends. When the SDGs were being formulated, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development(UNCTAD, 2014) estimated the SDG financing gap to be$2.5 trillion per year. Important lessons for the preparation of the Beyond 2030 agenda can be drawn from historical precedents and the processes leading up to the SDG commitments before 2015. Adequate financial resources, and the ability to use them for the right purposes, is a key prerequisite for the achievement of any development agenda. Ambitious ends can only be achieved by ambitious means. An ambitious development agenda requires a solid financial foundation. In the mid-2010s, when the United Nations(UN) process for a new development agenda was designed, develop­ing countries insisted that the international community negotiate financing for development before establishing new agreements on development goals. Hence, in 2015, the Third International Conference on Financing for De­velopment was held in Addis Ababa in July, before the UN Summit on Sustainable Development adopted the Agenda 2030 and the SDGs in September and the Cli ­mate Summit under French presidency adopted the Par­is Agreement in December. However, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda was weak and vague because of disagreements among Member States. In contrast, the UN Summit on Sustainable Develop­ment adopted the most comprehensive development agenda ever, while the Paris Summit added additional targets for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Proponents of an ambitious development agenda argue that such UN agendas are always aspirational, meaning that high and(unachievable) targets are set to create political pressure for change. The SDGs intended to push Member States to mobilize more development fi­nance and allocate it appropriately. Indeed,“closing the SDG financing gap” has been a standing agenda item on the international policymaking agenda since 2015. From billions to trillions? The failure of the “private finance first” approach An influential contribution came from the two Bretton Woods Institutions—the World Bank and the Interna­tional Monetary Fund(IMF)—when they released a concept paper with the catchy title From Billions to Trillions: MDB Contributions to Financing for Develop­ment (World Bank, 2015). The assumption was that public finance would never meet the financing needs of the SDGs. Private finance needed to fill the financ­ing gap, and the key role of international public fi­nance was to leverage private capital for investments. The few billions of official development assistance (ODA) that richer countries and multilateral develop­ment banks were willing or able to spend should be deployed in such a way that would mobilize trillions of private capital. For a variety of reasons,“billions to trillions” failed. First, leverage ratios were disappointing in practice. The slogan suggests that each United States(U.S.) dollar of official finance could leverage up to$1,000, but independent assessments found that in practice the ratio did not even reach 1:1(Attridge& Engen, 2019). Second, despite subsidies and guarantees, pri ­vate investors were not willing to invest in countries and sectors where development investment is needed most, e.g., in fragile states or in public services such as the health and education sectors where it is hard to achieve high profit margins. From grants to debt crises Even when private finance was successfully mobi­lized, it had disastrous side-effects because insuffi­cient attention was paid to the cost of capital. Many developing countries successfully attracted private finance, but at ultra-high costs. UNCTAD’s A World of Debt highlights that the average bond yield on sovereign bonds from African countries was 9.8% during 2020–2025, while the U.S. government only paid 2.8%(UNCTAD, 2025). In many cases, the yield on investment was lower than borrowing costs, and the size of borrower countries’ economies grew more slowly than their debt stock. Hence, after a decade of“billions to trillions,” we see record debt levels and shrinking fiscal space caused by high debt service payments, while outflows on debts owed to private creditors exceed inflows in many de­veloping countries. It quickly became evident that you cannot finance sustainable development with unsus­tainable finance. Financing Development for a Beyond 2030 Agenda 3