Cláudio Puty (Federal University of Pará)
Anit Mukherjee (Observer Research Foundation America)
Ana Elizabeth Neirão Reymão (Federal University of Pará)
Rogerio Studart (Centro Brasileiro de Relações Internacionais -CEBRI)
Douglas Alencar (Federal University of Pará)
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. The time for action is now.
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. This requires a hub of thought leadership and expertise – an institution focused on solutions exclusively from the point of view of the Global South.
The recently launched Climate Finance Center for the Global South (CFC-GS) is a step in that direction. It is a think tank based in Bélem with primarily focused on bridging the policy-finance-outcome knowledge gap in the Global South. The objective is to create a South-South network of public policy professionals, academics and practitioners to share knowledge, build coalitions and co-create solutions to mobilize and deploy climate finance at scale. Currently, such initiatives are mediated by Global North institutions – multilateral development banks, bilateral agencies, non-profits, philanthropies and private investors. The CFC-GS will challenge these hierarchies, provide a platform owned by the Global South, act as a knowledge hub, and coordinate actions to mobilize and deploy climate finance as per their priorities.
As the largest city in the greater Amazonia region and the seat of the government of the state of Pará in northern Brazil, Bélem has historically occupied a critical space in the climate and development debate. While much of the global attention has focused on preserving rain forests like the Amazon to act as a carbon sink for the world, cities like Bélem face increasing pressure to accelerate clean energy transition in the face of limited budgetary resources, thereby making access to climate finance a pressing issue.
More importantly, Bélem will host COP30 in 2025, marking 10 years since the Paris Climate Accord. Countries will report on progress towards their Intended and Nationally Determined Commitments (INDCs), making it a historic milestone in global efforts to combat climate change. The CFC-GS will be a lasting legacy of COP30, mobilizing countries of the Global South for the foreseeable future.
The CFC-GS will initially focus on four key themes relevant for the Global South:
- Climate and public finance
- Climate finance instruments
- Climate finance for cities
- Climate Finance tracker for COP30
The themes have been chosen keeping in mind the objective of the CFC-GS: bridging the policy-finance-outcome knowledge gap in the Global South. First, the Global South is already feeling the impact of the changing climate underlining the urgency and need for governments to significantly increase both mitigation and adaptation expenditure from own resources, thereby exacerbating the risk of higher public debt, skewed devolution and macroeconomic instability. The CFC-GS will collate lessons and expertise from diverse countries that are taking measures to deal with the intersectional challenge of climate and public finance.
Second, the instruments of climate finance are becoming increasingly complex and often divorced from actual needs on the ground. The CFC-GS will focus on understanding the limitations imposed by instruments such as risk mitigation, debt-for-climate swaps, blended finance, carbon credits etc. from the perspective of policymakers and practitioners from the Global South, especially those in charge of implementing adaptation and mitigation programs. It will be necessary to carry out comparative studies to propose new instruments that, at the same time, respect the regulations imposed on financial entities such as banks and funds, but that contribute to the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Third, cities are at the heart of climate finance and policy. They are the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions through vehicular and industrial pollution. With urban populations in the Global South set to increase significantly over the coming decades, ideas and innovation originating in cities like Rio de Janeiro, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Jakarta, Bangalore and many others will determine the future of how people live and work, and what climate-friendly, resilient and adaptive societies would look like. This requires mobilizing and deploying climate finance at an unprecedented scale, making it imperative to design solutions and apply lessons from across the Global South. The difficulties that cities in the Global South face in accessing appropriately priced financing is a major obstacle to the transition to a low-carbon economy. The CFC-GS will propose new instruments for increased private investment, but more importantly, think of new ways for nation states to increase their own investment while maintaining macroeconomic stability and ensuring debt sustainability over the long run.
In just over a year’s time, the eyes of the world will be focused on Belém as the host city for COP30. Coming at the 10-year anniversary of the historic Paris Agreement, there is a growing realization that it has not been successful to attain the goal of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees. Countries have been only vague commitments on net zero, including at successive COP meetings without the necessary accountability. When tangible commitments are taken into consideration, climate finance efforts have not reflected the scale and urgency of the challenge. The CFC-GS Climate Finance Tracker in the lead up to COP30 will put a spotlight on the accountability – or the lack of it – on climate finance commitments from the global community.
Taken together, we hope that the CFC-GS as an institution will be owned by the Global South, create a community of action across the Global South, and co-create solutions that address the needs of the Global South. We urge you to join this movement.
