What we work on

The impact of our work

We collaborate with our members, governments and policy makers to influence how we can fund development sustainably. We tie our work on economic development with the Sustainable Development Goals, championing sustainable funding to reach the goals.

We push to make new, sustainable models a reality through our collaboration, ensuring everything we do is seen through the lens of decolonisation, anti-racism and climate realities.

We do a variety of work in the sustainable economic development space, which you can find out more about here.

If you have any questions about our work on sustainable economic development, please get in touch.

Other work

We also work in a number of areas linked to sustainable economic development.

Development Financial Institutions

Since 2019, Bond has been leading the sector’s engagement with the UK development finance institution (DFI), British International Investment (BII). BII is the UK’s international development instrument and uses investment in the private sector as a pathway to poverty eradication, economic growth and prosperity. UK ODA transfers to BII have significantly increased since 2022, and it is the sector’s responsibility to provide adequate scrutiny to keep BII and FCDO, as its shareholder, accountable.

Over the years we have been convening dialogue sessions with BII on topics such as gender mainstreaming, responsible investing, measuring development impact, climate action and decent work to discuss challenges and how BII’s performance and impact could be improved. This has allowed our members to engage directly with BII on specific aspects of its investments and provide feedback and recommendations that consider local communities’ perspectives.

Bond is working to rethink and reimagine the role and purpose of DFIs, with a specific focus on localisation, focused development challenges and business models.

To join Bond’s convening with and on BII, please join our Sustainable Economic Development Working Group.

Reforming international financial architecture

Bond is convening members to share information, build shared understanding and coordinate our individual and collective efforts to support and advance reforms to make the global financial system fairer, more equitable and fit for today's challenges.

One of the ways we do this is through our International Financial Architecture (IFA) Working Group where we focus on issues including debt, tax, climate and development finance, multilateral development banks, and global economic governance and trade across different political processes and multilateral spaces (such as the G20 spring and annual meetings, the International Conference on Financing for Development and the UN General Assembly).

Until summer 2025, we will focus on convening the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development, which takes place in Spain in June 2025 and offers a once-in-a-decade opportunity to engage on the finance for development agenda within the UN space.

Ahead of the Paris Summit, which took place in June 2023, our media brief outlined the sector’s perspectives and key recommendations, based on three key priorities:

1. Governance reform
2. Rethink approaches to development
3. More and better finance

Reforming the global financial architecture was one of the key asks of the Bond 2024 election manifesto. In it, we called on the new UK government to proactively support progress on the reforms, which are critical for rebuilding trust with partner countries and enabling all countries to finance their development needs.

Sustainable food systems

Following the Global Food Security Summit hosted by the UK government in November 2023 and prominent attention to food systems at recent COPs, we have seen food security and food systems carve out long overdue space on the international development agenda. Considering the growing importance of food security and food systems in the context of climate action, poverty eradication and humanitarian emergencies, in 2024 Bond established a new working group on food security and sustainable food systems as a space to bring together Bond members whose work is linked to food.

Bond is facilitating collaboration, information sharing, convening members and coordinating joint policy and advocacy activities linked to food on issues including food security, sustainable food systems, food production and trade, food and agriculture, seeds and fertilisers, nutrition and food sovereignty.

Read our policy brief for the 2023 Global Food Security Summit.

G7 and C7

We work with the Civil 7 (C7) Group, which is one of the official engagement groups of the G7, and represents the voice and perspectives of international civil society. The C7 provides a platform for representatives of civil society organisations from around the world to collaborate, develop policy recommendations and engage in dialogue with the G7.

Get involved

Blogs and resources

We have a wealth of blogs and resources on sustainable economic development and regularly host events and webinars on the subject.