SPECIAL FEATURE
According to the IPCC, an
increase of more than 1.5°C by 2030 means a 90 percent chance that all the Maldives’ coral reefs will die off
institution and others. So it’s not just limited to the World Bank; there’s a there’s a role for everyone to play here. As the largest provider of multilateral climate finance, it’s imperative that the World Bank takes a leading role in that dialogue while regional development banks work alongside to craft solutions and amplify impacts. All this involves new need-based money and new coordination. So for the development banks this means leveraging, frontloading and maximizing balance sheets much more than in the past. We also need new infusions of capital from public and private sources, so governments and public finance must step up and give these institutions the capacity to fulfil their mandates, including fixing the regulatory environments. If countries like the Maldives are heavily in debt and can’t keep on taking on more debt, but at the same time it’s clear that they’re not going to get a whole grant for big essential infrastructure projects, what can be done? You can help countries like the Maldives access more money at better rates; you can help with guarantees that have little impact on debt, but which allow us to continue on our development paths; and you can help with our new adaptation needs linked to biodiversity, health, food security, water and infrastructure – five elements highlighted by the IPCC that need to be protected for human well-being. Development agencies need to ensure that the most vulnerable countries get access to concessional finance, noting the fact that many developing countries are already in debt and that increasing
debt is unsustainable. This is something that needs to be dealt with in the broader international financial system, so there needs to be some leniency or reforms because the status quo is simply not sustainable. Developing countries have fought for grants from the Loss and Damage Fund, but we all need to accept that it cannot do everything. It cannot address things like debt and climate migration – all the complexities that come with non- economic losses and damages. We also need to mobilize the private sector, the philanthropists and the sovereign wealth funds if we hope to address the scale of the impacts on the horizon of 1.5°C and beyond. We have to get all hands on deck – to turn the billions into the trillions that are needed to address loss and damage. We have to keep the ambition and political momentum high, which is why I proposed this high-level dialogue to the Transitional Committee. This is going to be something that the UN Secretary General will co-convene with the Loss and Damage Fund with the main actors and funders, which would be the key UN institutions like the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the multilateral development banks and so on. That is important because we need to find ways to address the policies, change the protocols and ensure that work being done in these organizations aligns with the realities of 1.5°C and beyond. Also there is a reason to coordinate better so you don’t double count – for instance, if you already have a program
for insurance or early warnings,
then you claim that’s your contribution to the Loss and Damage Fund. We don’t want existing funds to be diverted or repackaged. The whole reason why loss and damage has moved fast is because of political pressure, including at the level of the UN Secretary-General. The recent Climate Ambition Summit was the first time all these international financial institutions, their heads and VPs came to New York and discussed what they were going to do about loss and damage. These are the same institutions that have never uttered the words loss and damage before, so everyone was wondering why should they be involved in a UNFCCC process? Well, because the UNFCCC – as the UN entity tasked with supporting the global response to climate change – is important as a multilateral space and the only multilateral space that the world has to solve this crisis. It cannot do it alone because time is running out. The impacts are really big. We saw what happened in Pakistan, where upwards of US$30 billion of funds were wiped out by one disaster, which completely submerged a third of the country. We cannot only rely on replenishments. We have to think big because loss and damage can only be addressed through a mosaic of solutions. That mosaic has many pieces and the UNFCCC will play a central role, but together with the new Fund there is also a big role for the development banks and international financial institutions to play. So let’s keep our ambitions really high.
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