By Nancy Marangu
World leaders and diverse stakeholders convened during the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 29), the 19th meeting of the COP serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 19), and the sixth meeting of the COP serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA 6) in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November 2024.
They aimed to complete the first enhanced transparency framework and establish a new collective quantified goal on finance, among other climate action matters. As they engage in these discussions, the financial landscape for climate financing is rapidly evolving.
This is with the appreciation that healthy and well-managed ecosystems, together with a stable climate, are critical for the prospects for long-term sustainable development. Ecosystems provide a range of services to people and societies. These benefits include provisioning services such as food, water, and forest cover; regulating services that affect climate, floods, disease, wastes, and water quality; cultural services that provide recreational, aesthetic, and spiritual benefits; and support services such as soil formation, photosynthesis, and nutrient cycling.
Notably, the Global Environment Facility-supported Millennium Ecosystem Assessment underscores that healthy ecosystems and a stable climate are vital for broad economic prosperity. In many instances, they also enhance social inclusion by meeting the needs of the vulnerable, both women and men, reducing the risk of conflict and insecurity.However, the increasing human population continually alters ecosystems, sometimes in radical ways, to meet growing demands for food, fresh water, forest cover, fuel, and other goods. As a result, 60 per cent of ecosystem services globally have been degraded in the past 50 years. In the same period, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report, 2014 underlines that climate change has emerged as today’s pivotal environmental and economic challenge.
Various finance providers and instruments are increasingly focusing on sustainable investment to mitigate the climatic impacts, according to the Global Environment Facility (GEF) 2020 Strategy. New institutions with mandates similar to the GEF’s, such as the Green Climate Fund and the Climate Investment Funds, have entered the arena, emphasizing the need for the GEF to seek complementarities and collaboration proactively. Private investors, including pension and sovereign wealth funds, also increasingly invest in public-private partnerships, focusing on green investments and bonds. Besides, regional development banks have intensified their focus on environmental sustainability. In some emerging economies, national development banks and state-owned policy banks are emerging as major players in sustainable green finance.
Significantly, through the Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme (GEF SGP), the dichotomy of environmental relevant finance has further impacted locally led initiatives at the grassroots level. The programme continues to catalyze and mobilize civil society organizations to implement locally led innovations to address environmental degradation while promoting sustainable development and improved livelihoods. However, to broaden the impact of the programme, there is an urgency to rethink how financial and technical support to local civil society organizations (CSOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs), with a particular focus on persons with disabilities, can be enabled to access the green financing provisions, to facilitate them to develop and implement accessible and inclusive innovative local actions that address global environmental issues, while also improving their livelihoods and reduce poverty.
