UN Climate Champion Report on Climate Initiatives to Accelerate Action
“Assets to Flows —Insights from the regional finance forums on climate initiatives to accelerate climate action and advance the SDGs” summarizes the work and key insights on what it will take to convert financial assets into flows derived from a series of forums, titled “Climate Initiatives to Accelerate Climate Action and Advance the SDGs”, which were co-convened by the COP27 Presidency, the five United Nations Regional Commissions, and the Champions for COP26 and COP27 over the course of 2022.
The outcome of the forums includes both practical insights and project lists. An illustrative selection of the projects identified through these forums will be made available online with a number to feature as part of a United Nations-published Compendium of Climate-Related Initiatives and a Climate Champions’ Extended Compendium of Climate-Related Initiatives published alongside this report.
Overview
A significant push is required to meaningfully improve the scale, quality and pace of investment and finance for projects supporting the climate change agenda, especially in developing countries. Amongst other things, this push requires the development of impactful projects that prospective financiers, be they public or private, debt or equity, commercial or philanthropic, can coalesce around and support. Building projects, and project pipelines, from concept phase through to investment readiness is a complicated but essential task, and one that potentially requires different sources of funding across the various development stages or life-cycle of projects. The need to close the adaptation gap is especially acute. Project developers and investors must focus on preparing and investing in projects that build resilience and protect the vulnerable from the negative impacts of climate change; to drive systemic change and innovation for carbon neutral, climate resilient transformation in the context of just transition; and to protect and restore natural capital.
We need to adopt a collaborative and holistic approach to climate and sustainable development needs. Actors on both sides of the financing gap must work more closely together to maximize the benefits and investment potential and to overcome barriers to investment that are currently choking off critical capital flows.
In addition, it is critical that the private sector be engaged early, recognising the value that they can bring to problem solving and structuring; the private sector should be viewed not merely as a pool of capital, but as a pool of expertise. This is a message that the UN High Level Climate Champions (the “Champions”) will continue to drive amongst stakeholders, including regional GFANZ networks and UN Regional Commissions.
