Mohieldin: Scaling Public-private Partnerships Necessary to Bridge Financing Gaps of Development, Climate Action

Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, UN Climate Change High Level Champion for Egypt and UN Special Envoy on Financing 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, said that scaling public-private partnerships is necessary to bridge the financing gaps of development and climate action.

This came during his participation in a session entitled “Sustainable Finance and Its Impact on the Future of Business” within the events of “The Outlook for the Economy and Finance” conference, organized by “The European House - Ambrosetti”, with the participation of Virginijus Sinkevičius, EU Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, CEO of BNP Paribas Group, Letitia Webster, Managing Director and Chief Sustainability Officer at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Ronald Cohen, Founder of The Global Steering Group for Impact Investment, beside a big number of businessmen and officials of major economic organizations and banks from all over the world.

Mohieldin explained that governments are facing successive crises and shocks that make it hard for them to finance development and climate action individually, stressing that governments need support from private sector, civil society and international development and finance institutions to help them staying on track to achieve sustainable development including confronting climate change.

“Linking public budgets to SDGs, scaling public-private partnerships, mixing public, private, internal and external sources of financing and activating innovative finance tools and debt reduction mechanisms are all essential for states to achieve their goals of sustainable development.” Mohieldin said.

Mohieldin confirmed the necessity of agreeing on specific ESG criteria that the private sector and corporates’ contributions to environmental and development action should correspond with, with building on the relative international reports that launched recently, including the experts report launched during COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh under the guidance of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The climate champion highlighted the the necessity to double the international effort to achieve climate targets, including reducing carbon emissions by half by 2030, mobilizing just and adequate finance for adapting to climate change through enhancing the private sector’s participation, and activating Loss and Damage Fund that has been launched during COP27.

“Achieving SDGs, including the goal of confronting climate change, requires the availability of three main elements which are just and adequate finance, scientific and technological solutions required for the green transition, and the behavior change on the levels of government, corporates and institutions in a way that serves development and climate action.” Mohieldin concludes.