Development-Optimal Climate Finance

Around the world, rising humanitarian needs and intensifying climate impacts are putting pressure on stagnant or shrinking development budgets. This creates a dual challenge: how to finance urgent priorities in health, education, and infrastructure while also meeting climate commitments.

This seminar will explore the concept of development-optimal climate finance—an approach that disentangles the risks, costs, and benefits of climate action from those of development. Akash Deep, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and Nick O’Donohoe, Former Chief Executive Officer at British International Investment, will explore the challenge of allocating aid resources across the overlapping mandates of development and climate action. Deep and O’Donohoe will discuss the risks of conflating development and climate objectives, the necessity of disentangling the two, and how public donors and private investors can better manage funds to achieve their desired impact.

The seminar will also introduce potential solutions for disentangling the rewards and risks of climate and development finance, including the Green Swap, a new financial instrument devised by a project team at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, which could lower financing costs for renewable energy projects in developing countries while freeing resources to meet pressing development needs.

Q&A to follow. Lunch will be served.

RSVP required. Those without a Harvard University ID will be required to check in with security upon arrival at Harvard Kennedy School.

Recording: A recording of the seminar will be made available on the Belfer Center's YouTube channel.

Questions? Contact Elizabeth Hanlon (ehanlon@hks.harvard.edu)

This seminar is part of Harvard Climate Action Week 2025 (September 15–21), a series of events that will convene our world-class faculty and leaders in business, government, and civil society. The week will culminate in the Salata Institute’s Harvard Climate Symposium: Pathways for Progress on Energy and Climate on September 19-21. Learn more: https://salatainstitute.harvard.edu/hcaw/ 

About the Speakers

Akash Deep is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy specializing in finance, faculty chair of the Infrastructure in a Market Economy executive program and faculty co-chair of the International Finance Corporation executive program. He has also served as faculty chair of the Indian Administrative Service executive program at Harvard University and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

His expertise lies in infrastructure finance and valuation, public-private partnerships, financial risk management and derivatives, and the management and regulation of financial institutions, financial markets, and pension funds.

Professor Deep teaches courses in financial investments, risk management and infrastructure finance in the degree and executive programs at Harvard. He has also led executive programs at the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Inter-American Development Bank, National University of Singapore, Booz & Co, KPMG, and Goldman Sachs, amongst others.

Professor Deep has provided advice on bank restructuring, infrastructure financing, capital markets reform and pension funds to various governments and firms around the world, and his work has been cited in journals and publications such as the Financial Times and the Boston Globe. He has worked in the financial institutions and infrastructure section of the Bank for International Settlements, and served as consultant and expert for the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, the United Nations, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, the Federal Highway Administration, and the Latin-American Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee. He also serves on the Capital Debt Affordability Committee of the State of Massachusetts.

Certified “Financial Risk Manager” by the Global Association of Risk Professionals, Akash Deep holds a PhD in economics and an MA in operations research from Yale University, and a bachelors degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Nick O’Donohoe CMG was Chief Executive Officer of British International Investment (BII) from April 2017 until November 2024. BII (formerly CDC) is the UK’s Development Finance Institution and one of the largest bilateral DFIs in the World. During his tenure, the organisation grew from 250 to over 700 people. It deployed over $10B in investments across Africa and Asia in support of private sector development and also became the UK Governments leading provider of climate finance to Emerging Economies. It led innovation across a broad range of key areas of development finance including gender lens investment, blended finance, impact measurement and funding to lower income countries, particularly in Africa. 
Immediately prior to joining BII, from January 2016 to March 2017, Nick was  Senior Advisor on blended finance to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2011 Nick co-founded, together with Sir Ronald Cohen, Big Society Capital (BSC). BSC was supported by the UK Government, funded by dormant bank accounts, and is considered the world’s first social investment wholesaler. Nick served as CEO for five years, developed the organisation and led several important policy initiatives that have attracted over £10B to the UK social sector since the creation of the institution. 

Between 1996 and 2011 Nick was a senior executive at JP Morgan. Among other roles he was Head of European Equity and then Global Head of Research where he led the creation of the World’s number one ranked research department. He served on the Management Committee of the Global Investment Bank and the Executive Committee of JP Morgan Chase.
While at JP Morgan he helped lead the creation of the Banks Social Sector Finance unit and was the senior author of JP Morgan’s groundbreaking 2010 research report on “Impact Investments – An Emerging Asset Class?”

Between 1981 and 1996 Nick worked at Goldman Sachs in London and Zurich in a variety of roles including in equity capital markets and GSAM and also as Head of the Swiss office.

He currently sits on the Group Board of Equity Bank, based in Nairobi, and BlueMark in the US. He is a Senior Advisor to McKinsey and to the CEO of Africa50, a large infrastructure developer and investor. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Private Finance in Development at ODI, of the Africa Capital Hub (ACH), and of British Enterprise International (BEI).

Previously he has served as a board or advisory board member at several leadership organisations in Impact and Development Finance including GIIN, EDFI, GSG and GEAPP. He also chaired the UK Dormant Asset Commission which reported in 2017.

Nick has an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from Trinity College Dublin where he was a Foundation Scholar.

He was awarded the title of Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) by Her Majesty the Queen in the 2022 Jubilee Birthday Honours List.