INTERVI EW
OFQ: What is the OPEC Fund’s central message at COP31, and what would make the conference a success from your perspective? MA: Our central message is that the OPEC Fund helps countries turn climate and development priorities into practical projects that improve lives and attract investment. COP31 should be about moving decisively from ambition to implementation. The international community has established increasingly clear climate goals. The challenge now is to translate them into investment at the scale and speed required, while ensuring that climate action also advances development, energy security, water security, food systems, resilience and economic opportunity. This is particularly important for the countries we serve. Climate change, “Success at COP31 would mean a stronger global architecture for implementation: one that connects national priorities with credible project pipelines.”
change authority UNFCCC, we support countries in identifying and prioritizing needs and developing proposals that can be presented to potential financiers. In the Caribbean and Pacific, regional cooperation provides a practical way to bring countries and technical partners together. Investment forums connect the resulting project priorities with financing opportunities. The same principle guides our wider partnerships, including those focused on energy innovation and nature. Their value lies in combining expertise, project preparation and access to finance. Success means that a country’s priority moves closer to implementation, with a clear owner and a credible financing pathway. OFQ: The United Nations Environment Programme’s recent report on exceeding 1.5°C adds urgency to the climate debate. What needs to change in the international response, and what does that mean for development finance institutions? MA: The report reinforces the need to reduce emissions and strengthen adaptation together. Limiting how far and for how long temperatures exceed 1.5°C matters greatly for the risks countries will face. For development finance institutions that means helping countries prepare for worsening climate conditions while continuing to support lower-emission development. It also means examining whether projects remain viable under a range of future conditions. The international development community needs to make implementation easier. Countries need more accessible financing, stronger support for project preparation and better coordination among partners. Financing approaches also need to reflect the nature of the investment. Many adaptation investments provide essential public benefits but generate limited direct revenue, so public and concessional resources remain important. We must use the available evidence to sharpen our response and accelerate delivery, while maintaining the ambition of the Paris Agreement, despite the question marks hanging over it.
biodiversity loss, land degradation, water scarcity and development constraints do not occur in isolation. They reinforce one another, and our response therefore also needs to be integrated. Through initiatives such as Green-Blue Connect, the Nature Solutions Finance Hub and the Island Resilience Facility, we are demonstrating how financing, technical assistance, project preparation and partnerships can come together to address interconnected challenges. There is also an important enabling role for digital transformation. Better data, digital infrastructure and technology can strengthen climate planning, improve the management of water, energy and natural resources, increase the resilience of essential services and help countries track whether investment is delivering the intended results. For me, success at COP31 would mean a stronger global architecture for implementation: one that connects national priorities with credible project pipelines, brings public and private finance together, strengthens adaptation and resilience, while giving developing countries greater confidence that international commitments will translate into tangible support. For the OPEC Fund, success would mean using COP31 as a platform for building partnerships and investment pathways that can endure well beyond the conference. We want to leave with stronger pipelines, clearer partnerships and concrete opportunities to deploy capital where it can have the greatest development impact. Ultimately, the measure of success will not be the number of commitments made at COP31. It will be whether those commitments change realities on the ground: whether communities are more resilient, whether families have reliable access to water and energy, whether farmers are better able to withstand climate shocks, whether cities and infrastructure are prepared for a changing climate and whether countries can pursue their development ambitions on a more sustainable and resilient path. That is the transition we want to help deliver: from climate ambition to investment, from investment to implementation and from implementation to lasting development impact.
Musab Alomar, Vice President, Strategy, OPEC Fund
Checking water supply connections at a hydroelectric power plant
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