BY DARGIE KAHSAY
The world has continued facing multidimensional disasters due to climate change. To control climate change impacts, countries of the world, collectively and unilaterally, are working to save the planet. The countries are taking different initiatives to protect healthy nature and environment by minimizing emissions, investing on new environment recovery mechanisms and developing new environmental friendly technologies to develop both mitigation and adaptation.
To further these initiatives and investments to combat climate change, access to finance is key issue. Climate finance helps to expand mitigation methods in the sector since it needs large scale investments to reduce emissions radically, experts in the sector are arguing. In addition, climate finance helps for adaptation measures in the sector to adapt adverse effects and to reduce impacts of climate change.
According to the Paris Agreement on climate change, climate finance remains among the top mechanisms to tackle climate change. In this regard, the agreement underlines that consistent finance flow with pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate resilient development is crucial. The Paris Agreement places emphasis on assessing progress in provision and mobilization of support as part of global stock-take and underlines transparency and enhancing predictability of financial support.
Enhancing access to climate finance at global level is key to mobilize resources for the adaptation and mitigation measures on climate change and providing adequate finance for developing countries especially is key to develop the global action on combating climate change. Yet, according to experts in the sector, financial investment on the climate sector are limited though climate change remains a serious global problem more than ever.
Following the recent shocking reports that the world is experiencing in the sector, expanding and enhancing access to climate finance is crucial to enhance mitigation and adaptation efforts. During his recent interview with The Ethiopian Herald, Global Youth Climate Leader from Ethiopia and founder of The Youth Print stated that enhancing financial access would help to further the efforts in the sector.
According to Yared financial access in climate change helps to reward the more affected societies and at the same time to increase the mitigation mechanisms by developing investment to protect nature. In this regard, Yared said, providing direct support for green investment and rewarding with fewer shares in carbon emission are critical issues which need strong and applicable systems.
During the upcoming Conference of Parties (COP 26) scheduled in the coming November in Glasgow, United Kingdom, access to climate finance is expected to become among the top priority agendas of the conference. During the upcoming COP session, both in introducing new financial mechanisms and enforcement of the past covenants in this regard are expected, Yared noted.
IGAD Climate Prediction and Application Center (ICPAC) on Tuesday organized a webinar event entitled “Climate Finance on East Africa,” to discuss available potentials and developing mechanisms of financial sources in the climate sector for the region. Despite the existence of various funding mechanisms, developing country parties benefit little due to several constraints including lack of awareness of the existence or function of funding mechanisms, ICPAC stated.
According to the IGAD climate wing, inadequate capacity to write targeted project proposals to meet the specific requirement and funding limitations remain top problems.
ICPAC underlines that increasing knowledge and sharing experiences with regard to the available aspects of climate change financial implementations, such as institutional arrangements and organizational structures and determination of financial and technological capacity building support is necessary to develop access to climate finance in developing countries. Developing awareness on widening access, mobilize and deliver of international and national climate finance is critical to meet the goal of achieving the target in climate change battle, ICPAC argued.
In order to scale-up actions to cut climate change catastrophes, channeling financial sources and combing available resources is vital, according to the center.
Presenting a paper entitled, “carbon financing” during the webinar, Head of the Secretariat for Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition with World Bank, Angela Churie Kallhauge says that carbon pricing is one source of finance in the climate sector which provides incentives to realize mitigation action.
Through carbon financing, she noted, it helps for the efficient reduction of carbon emissions and also promotes the use of available technologies since the financing helps to reduce the emissions. This also helps to innovate technologies and changing business models to reduce emissions, she added.
According to her, currently carbon pricing is becoming developing and ambitious instruments are beginning across the globe adding new targets are also being adapted by governments. “Globally, carbon pricing is increasing, but in Africa it is very limited. South Africa is the only active country involving in carbon financing while Ghana is on progress to join,” Angela Churie Kallhauge said.
“In 2020, carbon financing generates about 53 billion USD globally which shows significant increase from the previous year,” head of the secretariat stated adding this finance would be used by countries for multiple purposes. The finance helps in development of social projects, investing on disadvantaged societies, funding climate action efforts like investment on renewable energy, climate mitigation and other purposes which are important to enhance the battle against climate change.
According to her introducing carbon pricing would play undeniable role to support the battle against the climate change and enhancing the system for developing countries is also important. For her, this would help to realize the net zero commitment and for the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs) by addressing climate change effects.
Peter Odhengo, Program Coordinator at Financing Locally-Led Climate Action Program, The National Treasury and Planning, Kenya said during the event that increasing climate financial resources would strengthen the efforts of to halt climate change effects. While sharing the experience of Kenya in climate financing, Odhengo stated that countries should develop mobilization of local climate financial resources to improve their mitigation and adaptation efforts.
For Odhengo, climate finance needs a lot of resources; hence, it is necessary to exploit all available potential sources locally and globally to enhance the tackling efforts of climate change. “We need to shift our agriculture in developing countries to support resilience and livelihood of local communities,” he noted adding “Hence, business as usual should come to an end and we need to transform”
Sharing Kenya’s experience, Odhengo stated that in 2018, 2.4 billion USD was flowed to climate-related investments in Kenya where over 59 percent is secured from international and national public resources while 40.7 percent from investments from the private sector. According to him, 79.8 percent of climate finance in Kenya was directed to the implementation of climate mitigation measures.
As to him, in addition to the international funds and supports, developing countries have to develop their local climate financing sources to develop their capacity of battling climate change and to cut the continued climate related catastrophes. Active involvement and participation of local community is important to enhance climate finance and help ensure local programs, he added.
Senior Advisor, Bankable Frontier Association Global, Jesse Fripp, at the discussion also stated that public-private participation is essential to accelerate actions in climate change and introducing innovative technological systems to develop financing mechanisms is crucial. He added that efforts are underway to introduce digital finance for climate resilience (DF4CR) during the upcoming COP 26 session aiming at enhancing fund, support and develop the solutions in climate change.
According to him, the new innovation in digital finance is expected to open new opportunity for public-private collaboration and investment in building large-scale resilience to climate change among vulnerable urban, rural and coastal communities.
The Ethiopian Herald September 4/2021
