Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, UN Climate Change High Level Champion for Egypt, UN Special Envoy on Financing 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and Facilitator of the Second Replenishment of Green Climate Fund (GCF-2), confirmed the need to redouble efforts of all actors to bridge the growing gap of climate finance, which is estimated at trillions of dollars.
This came during his chairing of the “High-level dialogue: The state of international climate finance” within the events of the High Level Pledging Conference for GCF’s Second Replenishment held in Bonn, Germany, with the participation of Jennifer Morgan, State Secretary and Special Envoy for Climate Action of Federal Foreign Office of Germany, Adnan Amin, Chief Executive Officer of COP28, Simon Stiell, UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Dan Jørgensen, Denmark Minister for Development Cooperation and Global Climate Policy, and Nino Tandilashvili,
Deputy Minister for Environment Protection and Agriculture in Georgia.
Mohieldin said that development action requires mobilizing $5.3 trillion annually until 2030, of which about $2.4 trillion is to finance climate action alone, $2.4 trillion of them must be provided through domestic funding sources, in addition to $300 billion comes from development finance institutions and about half a trillion dollars contributed by private sector, which reflects the importance of blended finance, increasing PPPs and enhancing the role of MDBs by increasing their capital and adopting new and more effective policies to finance development and climate action in low- and middle-income countries.
He added that the adoption of the holistic approach that considers financing and implementing climate action as a financing and implementation of development action has become necessary, explaining that mitigation activities and the work areas contained in Sharm El Sheikh Adaptation Agenda contribute to the achievement of other SDGs related to achieving food security, providing water and clean energy, creating job, developing urban life, conserving nature and biodiversity and protecting marine life.
The climate champion stressed the importance of all parties meeting their climate finance pledges while adhering to standards that ensure the integrity of climate action. He said that developed countries’ fulfillment of their pledges to finance climate action in developing countries by annual $100 billion, if done, will not be enough at all, but it will build confidence within the international community and open the door to the implementation of more pledges to finance and implement climate action.
He stated that global climate finance faces a number of obstacles, including the limited impact of the tiny participation of investment funds in climate action in developing countries, while rating agencies are not working well to assess the performance of countries and companies with regard to environmental and climate action, as well as regulatory and legislative bodies' laxity in monitoring the contributions of various parties to climate action and their commitment to the standards specified in this regard.
Mohieldin underlined the importance of mobilizing financing from its public, private, domestic and external sources, improving the business environment in developing countries and the performance of public finance, encouraging private sector to participate more in different aspects of climate action, holding more PPPs, and activating debt reduction tools and mechanisms to reduce the risk of financing and investing in climate projects.
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