The challenge: The climate crisis requires urgent resources to support the most affected communities to adapt to its growing impacts. However, many low-income countries struggle to allocate sufficient funds to transition their economies, adapt, and address loss and damage. According to the UN, developing countries now need trillions of dollars annually to meet the Paris Agreement goal of 1.5°C of warming – but the target of at least $300 billion annually pledged by rich countries at the recent climate summit in Baku (COP29), falls far short of the amount needed. The lack of a universal definition of what counts as climate finance means it remains fragmented, opaque, and often inaccessible to those who need it most. Furthermore the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQC) for climate finance agreed at COP29 foresees a significant role for Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) in channeling climate finance in the coming years – which raises concerns that climate finance in the form of investment and loans will fail to reach those who need it, and further deepen the global debt crisis. Research shows that less than 2,5% of climate finance funds go to small scale producers. Women, rural communities, and youth are often invisible in national climate policies, and frontline actors lack the tools, technical advice, and financing they need to adapt and thrive.
Our solution: We support civil society organizations to ensure climate finance reaches local communities and addresses the needs of those most affected by the crisis. At the same time, we will advocate against the use of climate finance as a tool of neocolonial control and ensure that funding mechanisms are rights-based, inclusive, and accessible to underrepresented groups.
Like through the global campaign to establish a loss and damage fund towards COP27 in Egypt. Civil society united and organized campaigns to push for the fund to provide financial support to vulnerable communities for the unavoidable economic and non-economic impacts of climate change. It aims to help nations recover from climate-related extreme weather events like floods and droughts, as well as slow-onset events such as sea-level rise, supporting recovery, reconstruction, and addressing issues like displacement. This was a successful effort by civil society to focus all on the same theme; as we are stronger together.