FROM AROUND THE WORLD
OPEC Fund Development Forum 2023
IsDB, IDFC, IAEA and FAO shared the latest thinking and lessons learned from their respective agencies. Sa š a Eichberger, Senior Environmental Specialist at the World Bank, said: “The amount of climate financing that the World Bank is delivering is increasing constantly. We are very happy to see that more and more organizations are applying the idea of measuring and disclosing the impacts of their financial investments on climate change mitigation and adaptation. We have a lot of experience with tracking and disclosing climate finance flows from our operations. We have also developed mechanisms for monitoring and ensuring our disclosed data is accurate. We are happy to share these approaches. “A recent focus is the new ‘core diagnostic’, which the World Bank is now implementing for countries, namely the Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR). These look very deeply into country contexts, which in turn help other organizations better assess their investments and see how they can support climate action.” Building on the foundations of alignment, participants discussed the basic question of how to scale-up climate finance. UN representatives counselled not only to join forces with other funds but to address climate and development challenges at strategic program levels rather than as individual ad hoc projects. In other words, agencies can add the most value by combining partnerships with coherent approaches. Also on the agenda was the multitrillion-dollar question of how to get more private sector financing on board. UN colleagues said this can be achieved by providing higher levels of concessionality, technical assistance and even results-based grants — but subject to regular review and always in line with the needs and capacities of the country in question. It was stressed, however, that many developing countries lack “absorptive capacity”, so the challenge is not only to make climate finance more accessible but actually more usable. For example, ACG members support several Small Island Developing States in the Caribbean and
Asia-Pacific, which have di ffi culties absorbing finance and delivering it to communities in need. Fortunately, there are case studies to learn from — including programs led by the World Bank, African Development Bank and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which are developing markets and building institutional capacity. “This is a very important topic,” said the World Bank’s Eichberger. “There’s a lot of money around but in order to disburse it in the most e ff ective way we put a lot of e ff ort not only in developing capacity but also in assessing this capacity ahead of the project itself. “We recently conducted a series of technical assistance capacity building activities in the countries where we’re working with the public sector on public financial management climate reform. Here we organized very targeted and comprehensive trainings of personnel to implement and develop country-specific resources — with a particular focus on climate change adaptation.” Delegates also discussed “just transitions” (plural), not only in light of balancing energy access with climate action but also other development areas including agriculture, transport, right the way through to financial markets. These transitions are all in progress and open-ended discussions will continue at COP28, said one UN representative. Dossina Yeo, Advisor to the Director of Operations at the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA), said: “All our members are a ff ected by climate change, so it is very important that we work together with partners to support African countries and to make sure we fully understand the common methodologies, challenges and possible solutions. “Over the last two days I’ve learned a lot about climate finance. Without alignment I’m not sure we’ll be able to measure and put everything together. We now have a common methodology, definitions and understanding — which means that we can work together and measure together. When it comes to data, we firmly believe in the saying: ‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’.”
Rania Al-Mashat Egypt’s Minister of International Cooperation
“Collaboration yields results” OFQ : How do you see the road from COP27 to COP28, specifically in terms of regional collaboration and achieving the climate goals? Rania Al-Mashat: As President of COP27, Egypt worked hard to make it an implementation summit and we pushed adaptation and resilience as key features for emerging economies, particularly on the African continent. Another major aspect that we are taking from COP27 to COP28 is the Sharm El- Sheikh Guidebook for Just Financing, where we define operationally how we move from pledges to implementation. This is work that is being discussed with stakeholders who participated in the design of the guidebook. At COP28 we will showcase some of the operational results. OFQ : How important to you as a minister is the long-term partnership between Egypt and the OPEC Fund? RAM: The OPEC Fund plays a very important role, particularly in engaging private sector investments in the country. There was a recent award for a project in the Arab world. That win was a testament to how collaboration can achieve results to push policy reform and private sector engagement while leveraging concessional finance to draw in more investments.
33
Powered by FlippingBook