Scaling up climate finance in the context of Covid-19: A science-based call for financial decision-makers

Thursday, 11th November 2021

Event to discuss how financial decision-makers can align finance with sustainable development and help to accelerate the transition to a net-zero, climate resilient economies, based on the latest scientific findings and policy developments. The event will provide an overview of four interventions to achieve this objective in the context of Covid-19: 1) Integrating policies on climate action, sustainable development, and Covid-19 stimulus, 2) Alleviating the debt burden of developing countries to create the fiscal space for a green recovery, 3) Setting up multi-sovereign guarantee funds, and 4) Developing credible green bond markets and facilitating developing countries accessing them.
These four immediate actions could have a structural positive impact on the future climate policy architecture. They could a) facilitate the deployment of carbon pricing since de-risking mechanisms will increase the volume of low-carbon investments at a given carbon price; b) magnify the impact of financial transparency and disclosure though the emergence of investments and asset classes of higher credibility; c) reduce the fragmentation of climate and development finance and d) enhance the capacity of MDBs and overseas assistance to support non-marketable services. These are critical to boost the adaptive capacity of societies and to crowd in private capital to fund mitigation activities.