The interface between government, politics and numerous institutions is lubricated by other people's money and maintained by those who chase after it.
We know this, we've always known it, our ancestors probably knew it too.
Mr Carter was still secretary to the hospital where Reardon had once earned his twenty shillings a week, but by voyaging in the seas of charitable enterprise he had come upon supplementary sources of income; for instance, he held the post of secretary to the Barclay Trust, a charity whose moderate funds were largely devoted to the support of gentlemen engaged in administering it.
George Gissing - New Grub Street (1891)
The UN’s Green Climate Fund Ran Short Of Other People’s Money
The UN’s climate funds spent a July dialogue asking for more money. The best thing America did was stop sending it.
On July 14, the UN’s Adaptation Committee put fund managers, negotiators, and development bankers on a video call to work through a problem that clearly has them rattled. The money is drying up.
The Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility, and the Adaptation Fund all sent people to explain how developing countries can tap them for cash. What they mostly did was ask for more. The reason they are running short, though, is news that ought to please anyone who pays U.S. taxes. In February 2025, the United States rescinded roughly $4 billion in outstanding pledges to the Green Climate Fund. We were the first country to do it. This spring, the United Kingdom followed, halving its pledge from £1.6 billion to about £815 million...
Where does the money go? The funds prefer to answer that in their own vocabulary. Ask what they finance, and you get “readiness,” “institutional capacity,” “capacity building,” “accreditation support,” “project preparation,” and “locally led adaptation.” Some of it does buy physical things, water systems and farms and flood defenses. A good deal of it, though, pays to build and staff the offices that write the grant applications in the first place.
