4th International Conference on Financing for Development

Sevilla, Spain | 30 June - 3 July 2025

IFBPW Side Event on Youth, Women & Climate Finance, Hall 7, FIBES, Sevilla, Spain  | 1 July 2025

BPW International joined hands with the Bagmati UNESCO Club, the FfD4 Youth Constituency of the UN Major Group for Children and Youth, and the Province Youth Council Bagmati in an energetic side event during the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development. The gathering was held at the Hall 7 of the FIBES convention centre in Sevilla as part of the civil society initiatives at the United Nations Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development.

Representing BPW International in her dual role as UN representative and Administrator, Dr Jenny Elmaco opened the session with a keynote that fused academic insight with on-the-ground pragmatism. Echoing her mentors Helmut Elsenhans and Mario Telò, she argued that the world’s SDG-financing gap is a test of multilevel multilateralism: “We have one generation to prove that inclusive incomes and layered governance can move faster than climate change,” she told the room. She framed youth and women as the “mass-income engine” of tomorrow and insisted that sidelining them would suffocate the very markets needed for a green transition.

Dr Elmaco then introduced Kate Raworth’s “Doughnut Economics” to map the safe-and-just space in which financing decisions must sit—above a social foundation of basic rights and inside planetary boundaries. From there she turned to artificial intelligence, describing it as a double-edged accelerator: a tool that can optimise crops and climate models but one whose data-centre appetite could double global electricity demand by 2030 if left unchecked. Her prescription was clear: couple clean-powered computing with gender-responsive, youth-led AI design so that digital progress amplifies rather than undermines climate action.

To translate principles into practice, Dr Elmaco outlined exploratory ideas including representation on decision-making spaces to guarantee gender parity and meaningful youth presence on climate-finance boards; and mandatory Gender Action Plans with gender-responsive budgets to tag every dollar to concrete equality outcomes.

The session closed on a note of collective resolve. Throughout the broader FfD 4 programme—from its opening on 30 June to the closing plenary on 3 July—BPW International maintained an active presence, attending high-level panels on debt sustainability, technology transfer, and gender-responsive budgeting while networking with youth delegates, development banks, and philanthropic funds. These exchanges deepened alliances for future collaboration and amplified BPW’s advocacy for gender-just, youth-centred climate finance. As the conference drew to a close under the Andalusian sun, one message resonated across meeting rooms and coffee breaks alike: women and young people will no longer be footnotes in climate-finance debates, and BPW International is determined to keep that momentum alive—boldly, inclusively, and sustainably—well beyond Sevilla.