Combating climate change is the defining challenge of our times. The Conference of Parties (COP21) meeting in Paris in 2015 urged countries to set national targets and outline actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a time bound manner to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Nearly a decade later, the world is no closer to achieving the goal – and may have even regressed – underlining the need to take urgent action on a global scale. 

While the global community ponders over how best to tackle the crisis, countries of the Global South are already bearing the cost of economic and social disruptions caused by global warming, adverse weather events, degradation of forest and biodiversity, and loss of life and livelihoods that these bring. From the perspective of the Global South, addressing the climate crisis is an urgent priority that requires mobilizing and deploying financial resources at an unprecedented scale. 

Policymakers are increasingly recognizing that depending on traditional sources of funding – multilateral and bilateral – would not suffice. Countries of the Global South need to raise domestic resources, attract capital, design instruments and deploy solutions without depending on the Global North for resources and expertise.