Testimonial:

When we founded the Geneva Forum in 2001, we wanted to create a neutral space where diplomats, scientists, entrepreneurs, and citizens could turn ideas into concrete action.

Twenty-four years later, in December 2025, we will hold the 17ᵗʰ edition of this Forum. It will be an opportunity to reflect on the path taken and, above all, to reaffirm a conviction: the future of international cooperation lies in impact engineering.

A Shared Observation: The Money Exists, but Not the “Investable” Projects

Each year, the investment needs for the Sustainable Development Goals exceed USD 4 trillion in developing countries.
At the same time, impact finance has reached USD 1.571 trillion in assets under management.
Yet, these two worlds still struggle to connect.

Analyses by the OECD and GIIN show that the real deficit is not money, but the lack of structured, measurable, and governable projects.
Public and private organizations generate relevant initiatives, but often fragmented, with heterogeneous metrics and economic models too fragile to attract institutional finance.

Why Does This Gap Persist?

• Engineering deficit: the majority of projects lack financial structuring and solid governance frameworks.
• Fragmentation of actors: institutional silos increase transaction costs.
• Heterogeneous metrics: each agency, NGO, or investor applies its own standards.
• Lack of neutral intermediation: few spaces exist where NGOs, businesses, researchers, and investors can co-create coherent pipelines.
• Decline in traditional flows: FDI and official development assistance are at their lowest levels since 2005.

In this context, neutral platforms like International Geneva become essential: they help reduce fragmentation, harmonize indicators, and make projects legible to finance.

The Role of the Geneva Forum: A Cross-Silo Impact Factory

The Geneva Forum has emerged as an operational extension of major international events – Building Bridges for finance, Geneva Health Forum for health, Geneva Peace Week for peace, or high-level UN sessions.
We play a complementary role: that of concretization.

• Transforming discussions into tangible impact projects;
• Connecting science Science La science est désormais l’affaire de tous. Découvrez la science d’une manière ludique et active. Nous vous proposons d’en découvrir plus sur nos expéditions à la voile, découverte du plancton. , fieldwork, and finance through cross-silo alliances;
• Developing a shared project engineering approach, inspired by the AGILE framework;
• Creating blended finance windows where public and private funds co-invest on measurable bases.

Our method relies on a clear cycle: pitch → workshop → co-modeling → financial structuring.
Each project goes through a phase of engineering, impact measurement, and then validation by partner investors.

Three Priorities for 2025–2026

1. Standardize engineering: provide a shared framework for project design and evaluation (AGILE + due diligence).
2. Structure transversal value chains: ocean, nature, project-based education, regenerative tourism – turned into real investment products.
3. Establish a “deal-ready” pipeline: projects ready for financing, with harmonized KPIs (IRIS+, ISSB).

These actions aim to create a lasting momentum: fewer conferences, more structuring deals.

Strong Alliances and Clear Differentiation

Our strengths lie in the neutrality of International Geneva, our UN anchoring, and our ability to orchestrate multi-stakeholder collaboration.
We align our work with the frameworks of the GIIN, the OECD, Convergence, and UN programs.
We also integrate citizen science Science La science est désormais l’affaire de tous. Découvrez la science d’une manière ludique et active. Nous vous proposons d’en découvrir plus sur nos expéditions à la voile, découverte du plancton. and regenerative approaches as levers for measurement (MRV) and traceability.

The Forum operates in partnership with Building Bridges, development banks, ocean and forest funds, and European programs around the rights of nature.

The Numbers That Matter

• USD 4 trillion: annual SDG investment gap.
• USD 1.571 trillion: current size of impact finance.
• USD 70 billion: capital mobilized via public instruments in 2023.
• 94%: investors satisfied with financial and impact performance.
• Decline in FDI: lowest level since 2005.

These figures show that private mobilization remains too low, but confidence in hybrid models (PPP, guarantees, patient capital) is growing rapidly.

Established Trends and Weak Signals

• Continued growth in impact assets and rising importance of climate windows.
• Gradual standardization of IRIS+ and ISSB indicators.
• Emergence of regenerative tourism as a transversal driver across environment, education, and local economy.
• Emergence of financial clauses incorporating rights of nature.
• Increasing use of citizen science as a performance-based financing measurement tool.

These weak signals point to a systemic transformation: value creation will increasingly depend on solving planetary challenges.

Towards an Integrated Impact Economy

Through the AGILE framework, the Geneva Forum supports the implementation of projects integrating:

• an inter-silo design;
• shared indicators;
• result traceability;
• and blended financing from public, private, and citizen partnerships.

Our ambition: professionalize the impact value chain while preserving the human and participatory dimension.

A Moving Laboratory of Cooperation

We have set up a quarterly Deal-Factory in Geneva, a shared KPI framework AGILE×IRIS+, and blended finance windows co-developed with OECD and Convergence partners.
Each quarter, several projects move from idea stage to term sheet, with initial concrete financial mobilizations.

This continuous experimentation model relies on a learning loop:

• monthly reviews,
• A/B testing of workshop formats,
• mini-RCTs to measure the effectiveness of incentives.

A Collective Call

International Geneva is not a static symbol: it is a living infrastructure of cooperation.
It must now reinvent itself as the epicenter of impact finance and regenerative economic diplomacy.
The Geneva Forum 2025, from December 8 to 12, will offer this space: a place where diplomacy, innovation, and the real economy meet.

We invite you to take part – not as spectators, but as co-authors of this global transformation.